Welcome to the website woven for wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. If you are heels over head (as well as head over heels) in love with words, tarry here a while to graze or, perhaps, feast on the English language. Ours is the only language in which you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and your nose can run and your feet can smell.

 

My recent column, “Here’s How You Can Tell If You Are a True Book Lover,” generated a billowing mail bag of luminous responses, so many that I have had to excerpt those that follow and place additional submissions on my website, www.verbivore.com.

I have loved reading books since my wonderful grandmother taught me to read when I was in kindergarten. From that point, I read anything and everything! Books and magazines that abounded in my house, every street sign and the backs of cereal boxes — you name it, I read it. If I listed my favorite books, the computer just might run out of space! My greatest gift has come from my children. I homeschooled them through the San Diego City Schools, and when they told me how much they loved to read, I knew my job was done. Because once you can read, the world is yours. You can go anywhere, learn anything, accomplish everything. -Janet S. Tiger, Linda Vista

I’ve read from the time I was four, graduating from Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot to the Harvard Classics in my grandparents’ bookcase by the time I was 7 or 8. I was mesmerized by Scheherazade’s tales in 1,001 Nights and transformed by tales of survival in Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Johann Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson. Through books I’ve gained insight into other cultures, places and people. The world beyond my limited reach has expanded through words written by Dostoyevsky, Irving, Uris, Updike, Hemingway and hundreds more. Books have provided a map for me to explore and discover the treasures within. –Wanda McLaughlin, Vista

When the latest Harry Potter book came out, we went to the bookstore and bought the huge tome for our granddaughter and then came home for lunch. Our granddaughter started reading the book in the car, and continued as she walked in the house. At the lunch table, she held the book in her lap as she nibbled on a sandwich. My wife tried to get her to put the book down, but was unsuccessful. Exasperated, my wife told her to stop reading the book or leave the table. Our granddaughter didn’t blink. She said she’d leave the table with her book! – Byron Earhart, Rancho Bernardo

Am I a book lover? I woo books in every corner of the country, from Bay Books in Coronado to Scribner’s in Williamsburg. A widower, half of my double bed is layered with books, downstairs in bookcases, on the floor of my master bedroom. Books are a huge part of my life, I cannot see a world without them. I greatly cherish a new discovery, whether from a known or unknown author. Books project deep into life in ways no other media can ever experience. –Ariel Morales, Fletcher Hills

I am one of those people you wrote about in your column, I have to have a stack of new books at all times, ready to be grabbed as soon as a previous book is finished. I get nervous if the stack gets too low and quickly peruse the thrift stores for replacements. It has to be a real book, not electronic. Holding it in my hands, turning pages and folding them down to keep my place so I can quickly open and find it again are the hallmarks of book reading to me! -Mary Sue Carrillo, San Carlos

Oh, how I envy the young readers who experience the pleasure of first reading of some of my favorites: Ann of Green Gables series, Little Women series, Edgar Allen Poe, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Jan Karon all the classics. What a life I’ve read, sometimes under the covers, using a flashlight! -Jackie Gammon, San Diego

Wow! You must know me. I am never between books. As soon as I finish one, I start the next. A really good book is one I can’t read fast enough but do not want to finish. I feel so blessed to have this love of reading. -Sari Camacho, San Marcos

I don’t have too many books, just not enough bookcases. I was about 8 when our teacher told us to silent read and she would let us know when to put our books down and switch to math. Well, I was so engrossed in my book that I didn’t hear her and just kept reading until I heard pupils laughing. My teacher told them that she wished all of them could get so caught up in reading books. –Patricia James, Temecula

Here are more readers’ statements about books.