The Prologue

The first book I loved was called The Big Red Bus. I remember very little, except that the bus went along a road, fell into a hole, and went CLUNK. Almost thirty years later, both parents and my older sister can still recite passages from memory.

Things have not changed much. There are no more bedtime stories and no more demands for excessive re-reading of the same book, but the love of the written word goes on and on. My bookcases harbour the Read and the Unread. The dark corners of my Kindle are further populated with stories, tales, sagas that have been read and loved, and those that have yet to make it to the top of my book mountain.

I think Sylvia Plath got it right when she said "I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want." That's no reason to stop trying, though.