In talking with my writer friends, we came upon the discussion of the first romance books we had read. Somehow 'Gone with the Wind' was mentioned and that reminded me of my maternal grandmother, whose name was Tommie Lou Campbell. I always thought her name was so unique for a girl. I think my first romance reads came from the small wooden (built into the wall) shelf in the small hallway of the farmhouse where my grandparents lived. I'd spend a few summer weeks at the farm in northwest Ga. and help myself to the books on the shelf, reading the ones that Granny was finished with or hadn't gotten to yet. There was nothing better than sitting on the screened front porch with the afternoon breeze blowing the heat away and finding myself lost in some other world of a book, most often romance. That is where I first picked up 'Gone with the Wind' myself, though I had already seen the movie. I remember Granny, with her apron on, baking the morning's homemade biscuits and gravy and telling me that "you might want to read that one when you are a little bit older." Well, a comment like that to a twelve year old meant I wasn't waiting to read it. What I found was an intense book I could not put down and it was the first time I had compared a book to the movie. Of course the book won! I remember also being fascinated by the little book Granny kept where she wrote down love quotes and love poems. I would copy them at times into my own notebooks and I still have most of those today. So I think I gained my love of reading from my Granny and then my mother. (More on mom and her reads in another post!)
