I remember the moment I suddenly knew how to read. I was in first grade, and Sister Madonna Marie placed on an easel a blow-up of a page from our reader -- a boy and girl playing on a slide, with a few words underneath. I'd known for a long time that those words would tell me what was happening on the page, but I hadn't put together how it all worked. Then, like a lightning bolt, I understood. I could read those words. I could read!

I immediately became incorrigible. I read and read and read, perusing the backs of cereal boxes when nothing else was to hand. I became known to my peers as the kid who always had a book with her, who used big words all the time (often mispronouncing them), who would rather read at recess than play. As you might guess, I wasn't a popular child. But I was a happy one, so long as I was reading. I spent my summers up in a treehouse, always with a book. Year-round, I rode my bike to the public library, always checking out the maximum number of books they'd allow me. I read in the car on family trips, whiled away Christmas vacation with books, spent spring break immersed in fairy tales. I even looked forward to being sick, because that meant uninterrupted reading time.

I majored in English in college, of course, and read books assigned in classes I didn't take because I could buy them used. I began building my own library with paperbacks I could buy for a buck. My library grew faster when I was in law school and spending my summers working for law firms for a larger salary than I'd ever imagined. Once I had my own apartment, the first thing I did was build a wall of bookshelves. The next thing I did was find out where every bookstore in my city was located.

I've been practicing law for 25 years, and I still love it. But my heart is where it has always been: in reading and writing. I've always loved fantasy; my earliest memory of books is of my mother reading fairy tales to me. Science fiction followed later when I was 12 years old, the Golden Age of science fiction. I started reading mysteries when I started practicing law, with trial thrillers my favorites, a sort of busman's holiday. Mainstream fiction entranced me, and I set out as well to fill in the gaps in my education with books like Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, West's The Day of the Locust, and Dumas's The Three Musketeers. (Someday I will get all the way through Melville's Moby-Dick.) Non-fiction explained the world, from history to biology to cosmology to politics to memoir. If it holds still long enough, I read it.

That is who I am: a reader. I live with 12,000 books, with more coming into the house every day. I read in the interstices of my days, on the elevator, standing in line, at lunch, in the evenings, on my vacations. I began reviewing some years ago, writing for The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Drood Review of Mystery, and, most recently, Rick Kleffel's The Agony Column (www.trashotron.com/agony).

Now I'm writing for you. I'll write about almost everything I read, whether it's a book, a magazine or a comic, whether it's new or coming or a classic. I'll try to bring you into my world, full of imaginings and whispers, ideas and philosophies, fairies and aliens and politicians and evolving cells. I'm glad you're here.

Disclosure: Some of the books I review here are books I've received from publishers or authors for free, in the hopes of a review. Some are books I've received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, another program in which publishers offer books to readers in the hopes of reviews. More often, I review books I've purchased myself or have borrowed from the library. Regardless of the source of the book, however, I give you my unvarnished opinion. I cannot be bought merely for the price of a free book, even as much as I cherish books.