[This column originally appeared in the Oct. 23, 2024 edition of the Sopris Sun.] When I was a child, my mother did three things that turned me into a reader. First, she signed me up for a library card. Later, she enrolled me in the Landmark series of American biographies for children, aimed at kids 10-15. There were similar series: Bobbs-Merrill’s “Childhood of Famous Americans,” which ran from the 1930s through the 1960s, had famously orange bindings and were also popular. Third, and maybe most important, my mother belonged to the Book of the Month club, which resulted in a modest home library. My mother knew what she was doing. It happens that there’s a lot of research about all of this. I often cite a University of Nevada, Reno study conducted back in 2010. It examined 27 countries over a span of 20 years. The surprising finding was that regardless of parental income or education, just having 500 books in the home was as good as having two parents with Master’s degrees. Early expo