By Christina Sinisi

I grew up in the mountains of Virginia to two relatively uneducated parents—my father was the first in his family to receive a high school diploma and my mother struggled to get her degree after having given birth to me. Before them, my grandmother on one side stopped at eighth grade and the other at third!

So, I did not go to school ready to learn. In our mountain elementary school, there was no kindergarten, so I began first grade without even knowing my letters. But somehow God graced me with a love of learning. And reading—boy did I love to read. By third grade, I was writing poetry and read the bible out loud in an adult bible study class—my mother brought us girls along since she didn’t have access to a babysitter.

My school library held so many wonders. I remember a whole shelf of books about twins from around the world. Then, on the other wall, there was Aladdin and the Forty Thieves. My mother risked the ire of my father and ordered me the classics—I read every Louisa May Alcott and Walter Farley I could find. By the way, why did my father get angry? Money was scarce and he had other priorities, like his own hunting trips. Ah well, such is mountain life. I kept those books and bequeathed them to my daughter, by the way. I broke that generational problem.

Today on My Reading Life, Christina Sinisi lets us know what's she's reading. #ReadingCommunity #Reading #BRRC Share on X

In middle school, the library was on the way to my homeroom. I got in the habit of checking out a book every morning, reading it in class and on the bus ride (an hour each way—yes, that’s how far out in the boonies I lived), and exchanging it the next morning. My favorites included every Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. I tried reading Canterbury Tales, but it was, um, too racy for eighth grade me (I read them all as a young adult).

By the grace of God, I placed in the high school Gifted and Talented program—no dual enrollment or AP classes back then—and we worked individually with a teacher in our area. An English teacher, Mrs. Spelman, loaned me a box of her own books from college and I read every one over the summer.

The only time I stopped this voracious reading habit was in college—or at least as far as fiction goes—while I focused on my studies. Once I started graduate school (I know, this is different), I had access to a used bookstore in Manhattan, Kansas called The Dusty Bookshelf and I was back at it—fiction!

I credit this love of reading and all these books to taking this girl out of poverty and into a world of imagination and hope. Thank you to everyone reading this who has every donated a book to your local library—or sweated blood and tears to write. God bless you!

Meet Christina

Christina Sinisi is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and a charter member of the Lowcountry South Carolina chapter of ACFW. Christina Sinisi writes stories about families, both the broken and blessed. Her works include a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest and the American Title IV Contest in which she appeared in the top ten in the Romantic Times magazine. Her published books include The Christmas Confusion and the upcoming Sweet Summer, the first two books in the Summer Creek Series, as well as Christmas On Ocracoke. By day, she is a psychology professor and lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with her husband and two children and cat Chessie Mae. Visit Christina at christinasinisi.com