1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

You can find my favorite authors listed in the first sidebar column. Here’s a rundown of how I met them all:

• CS Lewis–My father read the Chronicles of Narnia to me when was a little girl. For my 6th birthday, I had a cake featuring the old cover art from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In college, I attended a two-week symposium in Cambridge, England, sponsored by the CS Lewis Institute, and that’s where I fell in love with his non-fiction.
• Edith Wharton–I hated Ethan Frome, but fell in lover with Age of Innocence in college. I tore through the rest of her books. Still don’t like Ethan Frome, though.
• Flannery O’Connor love came from reading Wise Blood in high school.
• Jane Austen–now that’s an interesting case. I had to read Pride and Prejudice in ninth grade and hated it. Just a few years ago, I decided to give her another chance, and read Sense and Sensibility. I adored it, and adored all the rest of her books… including Pride and Prejudice.
• JRR Tolkien love grew from a lifelong adoration of Middle Earth from reading The Hobbit and watching the animated movies. On that same trip to Cambridge, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time and my passion was sealed.
• Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, and Barbara Vine were library reads. I had heard good things about them, and decided to take a chance.
• Shirley Jackson I picked up while working in development for a film producer. We were looking for material and somebody suggested I check out her work. Ah, me! One taste and I was lost. I found a book scout in Canada who tracked down all her out of print books for me.
• Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising was assigned reading in sixth grade. I immediately got my hands on the rest of the series, and have since reread it several times. I can’t wait to introduce them to Bean.
• Walker Percy was yet another author I discovered in Cambridge. I read Lost in the Cosmos, then his fiction, then the rest of his non-fiction essays on semiotics. He played a big part in forming my identity in my early 20s.

You may also notice I have a list of Author Sites I Love. Here’s how I met those folks:

• Dan Allender was thanks to counseling with a former pastor.
• David Bordwell from a grad school course on film narrative.
• George RR Martin was a recommendation from my best friend from college.
• Jeffrey Overstreet is a great blogger.
• Laurie Halse Anderson wrote Speak, and there’s a whole story about me and that book that I’ll save for another day.
• Libba Bray was recommended to me by an eighth grader at my old high school. I did a speaking engagement, and this girl was my mini-me–frizzy hair, socially awkward, and a huge bookworm.
• Madeleine L’Engle I’ve blogged about before, in a post on books that evoked a strong emotional reaction in me.
• Robin Hobb was a recommendation from the girlfriend of a college friend of my husband’s. This guy teases Melissa for reading what he calls “vampires in space” books. My husband likes to say, “How can you write a book about a dragon?” She and I hit it off immediately.
• Save the Cat! is the site of a recent book on screenwriting that my manager made me read. I wish I had read it ages ago… it really does live up to its own hype.
• Scott Westerfeld was discovered by me during a search to find young adult books that would make great movies. The Uglies series is being made into a movie, though not with me.
• Stephen King saved my life freshman year in college, before I made friends and a life. I whiled away many a long boring night with one of his gazillions of books, checked out of the library.
• T. Greenwood’s book Nearer than the Sky is quite special to me. A friend and I have an option on it and hope to turn it into a movie.

And there you have it–wow, it’s amazing what I can do while the baby takes a nap!