Reading

The home where I grew up in Florence, Alabama, had two great rooms for reading. The couches were not particularly comfortable for sitting a long time but when you are young you adapt and don't think about it so much.

My first novels were Hardy Boy mysteries. I probably owned a majority of the titles by then. I wanted badly to own Chet Morton's jalopy, which turned color depending on which installment you were reading.

In junior high I read a good deal of science fiction and fantasy (especially works by Ray Bradbury), but by the ninth grade I was raiding our high school library's shelves for novels by Hemingway. The novels were gritty and outdoorsy and I liked that, even if his characters were a little too "hard" for my taste. I eventually moved on to other classics and particularly enjoyed Dickens, though I would read a Stephen King novel on occasion, too (Pet Cemetery is one of the freakiest books ever; but his best to me is Misery, probably because it does not employ the supernatural.)

I also picked up a lot of cheap books at Books-a-Million, which at the time was just a former Kmart with stacks of surplus books that were rarely best-sellers. It actually was founded by the Anderson family of Florence, which had run downtown's Bookland for decades. As the Books-A-Million website states:

Founded in 1917 as a street corner newsstand in Florence, Alabama, Books-A-Million, Inc. has grown to become the premier book retailing chain in the Southeastern United States, and the third largest book retailer in the nation.

The Books-A-Million of 1983 was nothing like it is now. For some reason it had lots of hardback and quality softback novels by Vladimir Nabokov, who quickly became my favorite author. His plots and characters were quirky and his writing style was witty and unpredictable. Today I picked up "King, Queen, Knave" and got hooked again on his ability to poke fun more precisely at people than any writer, ever, without overwhelming the reader with attitude.

Reading in college got me to know Garcia Marquez ("100 Years of Solitude" - one of the best books ever), but I can't say I met any new American or British authors to get me very excited. In college I focused on my own writing and took a lot of philosophy courses. My reading was more varied in college, and I believe I became better for it.

Since college I've read a good deal overall, but less and less on a consistent basis. I'm not as quick to pick up a novel, though I did read a flock of Graham Greene novels a few years ago (he is terrific - an American Nabokov, though a little more conventional).

We read to Stella and Meg every night, and I think Stella will grow to love books. It's one of the best romances one can have, because you can keep it all your life, even after you become married.