Cassie McCullagh

I just read whatever I could get my hands on.

My brother and I would undertake these huge projects like let's read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

Okay.

Um, he started at A and I started at Z and we met in the middle because our theory being that, um, when we finished between us, we would know everything.

That's what we read because it was there.

We had a little library, which was upstairs over the electric company, you know, where people went to pay their utility bills.

So you went upstairs and there was this kind of grumpy lady who

who had ideas about what we should read and what we shouldn't.

So we would just sneak around and read things in the stacks.

And I just went straight to adult literature.

I taught myself to read.

I remember, I have a really clear memory of the first word I read.

I was about four, I guess, and the word was orange because I knew my letters and it was a newspaper because that's what was in the house.

And I just stared at words and said the letters and that one came clear, orange.

And then it was just magical.

Suddenly everything on the page was a word and I got it and I just really haven't stopped.

It would be hard to name one because they were so eclectic.

I mean, I remember I fell onto Gone with the Wind, which my mother thought was, I shouldn't read because it had, I don't give a damn in it famously.

And

I don't know if she knew what was in it, but she thought I shouldn't read that, so of course I did.