One of the most effective ways my parents stoked my love for reading as a kid was one summer they set a reading goal for me. Something like 7500 pages to be completed between certain dates. Anything I read beyond that, I got a a penny a page.

This quickly spiraled and they had to add the stipulation that the money I "earned" be spent on books, but by that point, I had fallen in love with reading to the point where I didn't care, I just wanted more books, particularly ones my local library didn't have.

That's the story of how I ended up with about half of Jude Watson's Jedi Apprentice series. I am on the lookout for the second half because it never occurred to me as a child that those books wouldn't always be in Barnes & Noble for purchase.