I have no regrets about my own career choice. I really can't imagine doing anything else. I may not read all the twentieth- and twenty-first century novels I'd have read in a different job, but there are still days I say, "I can't believe they pay me to" look at a beautiful Anglo-Saxon manuscript online, read Old English and Latin texts, teach Middle English romances--I'd never be doing these things as a hobby.

I read a bunch of Andre Norton growing up. My dad had piles of them, all these cheap SF paperbacks, sometimes two together, with a cover at each end (they met in the middle, and you turned it upside down to read the other one). And I fell in love with H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy and sequel(s), and then read Golden Dream, and that changed everything around.

I think he still has those books.