It seems to vary a bit between children. Most of my friends's kids were more like Tom's daughter (most of their parents were also big readers like him), showing fairly little interest in books before 18 m. (too bad, this is the #1 gift I make to kids..).

My niece however got interested in books quite before 18 m (apparently both my brother and me were the same, I just take my mom's word for it. I remember some of the books I had around 2 - especially an illustrated dictionary I learned to read with, but not much about my experience with them). In her "lower energy" hours, looking at books have always been my niece's favourite activity.

For many months she didn't focus long on any single book, she rather liked to "play" with several at once (she was a page-turner, not a chewer though). Very early she also became fascinated with books of family photographs (or the i-pad), and identifying people and things on them started very early too (pretty much as soon as she started to speak). She figured out illustrations were representations of real things a bit earlier than average, and that's an important precursor for the curiosity about reading (according to some French specialist/theories, how much it's integrated by first grade is an important factor in how fast and easily kids learn to read, and that in turn is a factor in developping the love for books). It's one motive behind the very irrealistic pictures in children books, to stimulate the understanding it's a "symbolic" representation). Around 18 m. she must have made on her own the connection that the letters/words where somehow a code with which adults could know the story and became fascinated with her parent's (adult) books (she sat with them and just turned the pages, telling us it was a story). We often give each other books, and last christmas she insisted to see all of them (at Easter it made me sweat to see my mom had left the volume from Modernist Cuisine I had brought on a low table in her reach, but my niece is as delicate with books as a 2 y.o. motor skills allows and all went well. I still breathed easier when she was done looking at it with me and I could go hide it!).

Her mom (a first grade teacher) was a bit ambivalent about teaching her to read so early (not all first grade teachers deal properly with children who know how to read beforehand, they often let them get bored), but she asked what was this or that letter constantly so they finally gave in and taught her the alphabet, and how to form syllables. From 24 m., she taught herself to read after a fashion. She does great with the basic sounds but the silent letters and compounded vowel sounds (in French ai, ei, an, in etc.) and subtleties like the context based change of pronunciation for consonants like "s" or "c" are beyond her at the moment. Cursive letters (very often used in French books from Europe, in Québec we rather adopted the American method and learn cursives later - it could change, studies have shown it slows down acquiring reading skills, especially for slower learners) were harder at first, but she figured it out.

She can read a word like "coco", but she reads "fait" as fa-eet, and though she distinguishes between them well when she speaks, every "e" is still a "é" to her when she "reads". Stacked consonants like ndr in words like fondre she can't decipher at all either (no surprise, that's second grade learning for French speakers...) It goes really fast though. Last Easter (she's close to 36 m.o. now, by the way) I noticed she now got o+u made the sound "oo".

I tried to fool her last christmas with one of her textured books, claiming the porcupine was "soft" (dou and when I insisted she won the argument by pointing the word "piquant" to me (which she reads as "pick".

She used to love being read to, but she's already reluctant and prefers to pseudo-read on her own (she's funny. At first she says the words she recognizes but rapidly it devolves into inventing a story). We need to wait for her to ask to be read to now, if we offer to she usually turns us down.

One of her favorite games of the moment when she's at my parents' is to pick books from the bottom shelf and observe them until she can determine if they're written in French or English (one native anglophone 3 y.o. at daycare was enough for that. Since she showed curiosity/interest, her parents expose her to TV/movies in English now). She gets quite a few of her guesses wrong (so many words differ only in pronunciation), but she's more often right.

Kids are a constant source of amazement, but what impressed me more about her and books is that she figured out they're not only for stories, that the cookbook I used in front of her was telling me how to make the dessert, and she wanted to see it again after the meal.

As for recommendations, my niece's earliest favourites were Soledad Bravi's books (the "list" type ones, like the Noisy Book which is one of her best, though looking at Amazon it seems it's also her only one that's been translated in English atm). I gave her a more advanced one centered on homonyms last Easter (Je serre le cerf dans la serre, ie I hold the deer in the greenhouse... I can see why this one won't be translated!).