Lee Anne's Literary Life

Or, rather, the literary parts of my life (then again that's almost everything). When I was very young, my parents decided it would be a good thing to pass along their love of books to me. Little did they know it would work too well. Now they have to beg me to stop reading. Once they tried banning me from all but school reading; I lasted maybe three days before I felt like I was going crazy. I read around 130 books last year (excluding schoolbooks). Most of them, I freely admit, are what I term "fluffy" books; that is, YA novels, fantasy, etc. Of course, there were a fair number of longer tomes (like Jane Eyre), but I like reading at a fast and furious pace.

Most of the writing I do is for the many inevitable school papers (this past semester, my first at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I took three honors courses plus a writing intensive course, so I was pretty much writing all the time). My major is Journalism, but I would love to switch to Literature if I just knew what to do with it. (Agatha Christie's the Queen of Crime. Maybe I could be the Queen of Fluffy Fantasy Readers.) In 2005 I was an Opinion Shaper for the West County Journal, acting as a type of guest-columnist and writing three articles. I've had a letter to the editor published in a magazine, and when I was really young my essay won a Father-of-the-Year Award for my dad (boy, I sound really desperate). Under much duress, Mr. Eubanks and Mr. Baker forced me to crank out a senior research paper on worldviews and Cinderella fairy tales (an area I find fascinating). I'd love to write books, and I'll start as soon as I think I have something original to say.

Some authors I enjoy: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, M.M. Kaye, Georgette Heyer, Shannon Hale, Baroness Orczy, Patricia C. Wrede, Garth Nix, and many, many others.