Whether or not I read too much as a child was a constant source of tension in my household. My parents, divorced, were of two minds. My mother likened books to food, and believed that if I was hungry I should eat. However, my father and stepmother were concerned that I was getting too little sunshine and—despite playing school and summer sports—that I was physically wasting away. As I lived with my father and stepmother we needed a compromise, and eventually decided that I could read as long as it was outdoors (with exceptions for bad weather), and so I would spend hours every summer moving from location to location, reading.