My first love was literature – novels and poetry. As a child, I loved storybooks, mysteries and adventures.
In grade school, I was made to memorise poetry and loved the exercise. High school introduced me to more serious literature: Shakespeare, Kipling, Keats, Wordsworth, Browning. On the side, I still read storybooks, cowboy tales from the old West, taken from my Dad’s bookshelf.
During my undergraduate years, literature was a major part of the curriculum and I learned then that literature wasn’t just about stories, but also about social and religious commentary, as well as about form and beauty as ends in themselves.
