How many books have you read in your life? If I've read 2 books a week since I was 5 (I learned to read at 3), it would be about 7,000. That doesn't seem like very many. For several years I won the children's library summer reading contest for reading the most books. Prizes for reading books! I won a book about JFK called The Torch Is Passed & a volume of stories by O Henry. I am pretty sure I won it more than twice but those are the only two books I remember winning. That may have been the first time my name was in the local paper. I read at least 5 books a week every summer as a kid ~ it being a contest was no additional incentive. I remember the smell of that library; I was envious of my best friend in high school having a summer job working there. When I was 5 my goal was to read all the books in the library but there were so many duds in the A's alone that I gave up in a week. This article is about me.