Reading in my family

I went over to the Common Room today and came across this post which got me thinking about how my family reads books. This isn't really about that post, it's more what I thought about because of that post. Anyway.

We're all readers in my family. My brother was the slowest to catch on, but when he did he certainly went. Given that we are such voracious readers, there is almost no way that my parents could have read all the books we do. When we bring them home from the library my dad looks through them before we read them and if he's not sure about one of them he'll preview it. Usually, however, he trusts our judgement and lets us read it even if he hasn't. In some ways we often preview books for him. That is, he'll come up and say, "I need a good book to read. Do you have anything?"

We are also book thieves. We steal books from each other all the time, especially my sister and I. One of us will get out a book from the library and everyone in the family will end up reading because we all leave our books lying around the house. It is so bad that sometimes I will tell my sister, "I get to read this book first. You're not allowed to steal it." She makes a sad puppy dog face but I ignore her. (Evil book thief. Not that I ever do it. Oh no......) And when a book goes missing we ask, "Have you seen my book?" and "Did you steal my book?"

Here are two we've passed around:

The Shadow Children series (Among the Hidden is the first) by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I think my mother originally got this for my brother but it made the rounds. My father hasn't read the series but everyone else has.

The Minnow Leads to Treasure by Philippa Pearce.