OMG, this is so crazy. My grandparents also traveled the world and brought us back all kinds of treats from Europe — including Cinderella in French that they bought for me in Paris, which began my lifelong love affair with French language and culture. My sister and I also had one really tall bookshelf and at the top were our china dolls that we weren’t allowed to play with, LOL, and the rest was just BOOKS.

I read almost all the authors you mentioned. My sister was OBSESSED with V.C. Andrews, but I never tried it — I went through a bizarrely puritanical, good girl phase in my teens. God knows where that came from. ;)

And same — I wrote novels from the time I was 10, a family newspaper, poems, journals, and plays that I forced my siblings to act in. LOL. They still joke about that today, me begging them to play the roles I just wrote and perform for our parents.