Have I mentioned that I love to read?
I began my career as a reader at the Brooklyn Public Library on 53nd and 4th with Pearl Buck’s “Peony.” I was in the fourth grade and my teacher required that all of her students have a library card. My mother, who also likes to read, was not what you might call excited about my acquisition of a library card because she believed that library books carried germs. With four children who spent a good portion of any given time period in bed, sick, I can appreciate her anxiety, however mistaken she was. I became a regular in the children’s section located on the right-hand side of the first floor at the library. My joy at this access was only exceeded by obtaining a stack pass when I was a junior at Syracuse University.
I really am passionate about reading both well written fiction and non-fiction. Authors that I admire are my heroes, creating a pantheon of names that have trailed along with me over the years. Admittedly, those who were heroes when I was younger sometimes don’t easily withstand the scrutiny of the years. What I enjoyed when I was less experienced in life is often not what I would select when I reread it now, but they were perfect for who I was then.
My house is filled with books, many left-over from college and teaching, dear in a way that is difficult to explain. I should get rid of them, but I can always find something else to do when the idea pops into my mind. Yes, I have given many books away to friends, to charitable groups, to the library, and still many remain, waiting to be read, fortunately for me. To me, that is like having a freezer full of cheesecake and vanilla ice cream. What a glorious situation.
There was a book club in my life. There were serious book lovers in that group and we looked at the books in ways that you wouldn’t normally examine something that you were reading. I miss that a lot. Because we scrutinized the book club selections from so many different angles, I found out that there was more than one way to get into a book.
Some of my fellow book club members underlined, wrote in the margins, took notes and devoured the texts. I haven’t done that since I was in college or when I was teaching. I’ve limited my interaction to simply reading for my own pleasure and, in doing so, I’ve also discovered that it is not necessary to read every book that comes into your hands. Some just don’t pass my mind’s filter. I guess that I used to think of reading books in the same way that my mother urged me to eat all of the stuff on my plate … those “starving children” somewhere! Are there starving readers out there in need of books that I don’t want to finish? Failing to finish a book doesn’t go on my permanent record, either.
Right now I have a deliciously-fabulous favorite author. In fact you might say that I have a crush on him, though I doubt if I could pick him out at a cocktail party, not that I attend many of such affairs or he would entertain attending any that would have me as a guest. Who is it? It is the superb historian, David McCullough, whose enormous tomes can capture my attention for weeks. I’ve finished “The Great Bridge” and “John Adams” and I am half way through “Truman,” but have stopped for a bit because my sister gave me a bag of Janet Evanovich books … the Stephanie Plum novels.
“Read these,” she said, “and be prepared to laugh.”
I like laughing but I put them aside until Norma, my endodontist’s mother, who only reads scholarly books about European history, confessed that she devours Evanovich. “Read them,” she said, “You’ll laugh out loud.” So I am reading them and laughing…out loud.
And then … there is the long list of books recommended by a little catalog, Bas Bleu. These are not great literature but the kind of books that substitute for therapy in a world where you are sometimes judged harshly for not reading tomes that examine weighty, often exhaustingly depressing topics. I buy most of them every year and then give them to my sister for Christmas with the hope that she will give them to me. It’s a win-win.
We both love to read.
