Journal Entry #6: Books

Date: November 4, 2007
Time: 20:06

As much as I love to write, I probably love to read even more. There were times, when I was growing, when that’s all I was allowed to do. When I was old enough to start getting real textbooks for English classes, I was always baffled by one thing; the books would weigh about 4 or 5 pounds, and course they were very thick, but we would only read maybe 1 or 2 short stories, at most, a single play, and then get swamped with homework.

Ironically, I never liked the reading assignments, I guess it’s because it was assigned. I did, however, read a lot of the rest of the book on my own. There was one textbook where I read the play, “The Miracle Worker”, the story of Helen Keller. There was another where I read the original play of “Visit to a Small Planet”, which was later turned into a film starring Jerry Lewis.

Some of the short stories I read were so obscure, that I’d never heard of the author before, or since, except maybe for one. The story was entitled “The Letter ‘A’”, and the author was Christy Brown. Now, some of you reading this might not know who Christy Brown is, or was, but if you ever heard of a little film called “My Left Foot” starring Daniel-Day Lewis, then you have most certainly heard of Christy Brown. There were others whose titles and authors’ names escape me at the moment, but I intend to find them someday.

Of the kinds of books I like to read, my tastes vary. I mostly read science-fiction and fantasy, some mysteries, some suspense, and I’m now reading re-prints of what used to be called “Pulp Fiction”, and I don’t mean that movie by whatsisname. These were books that sold for 10¢, or as much as 20¢ at the time, and considering that time was the late 30s, early 40s, ten and twenty cents was a lot of money. The books usually featured the adventures of characters known as “The Shadow” or “Doc Savage”. Sometimes, they would be a series of short, little, detective stories.

The suspense author I read most is named Clive Cussler. His most famous novel is called “Raise the Titanic”. In the fantasy vein, I read a series of books that takes place in a world called “Xanth”, written by an author named Piers Anthony. Xanth is a place where magic not only exists, but almost everyone who lives there has at least one magical talent. For instance, one of the characters can transform a person into a tree, or any other object for that matter.

There is this one detective series that I like to read whose lead character is a young woman named Mary Russell. The author is Laurie R. King. Now, while there may be some of you out there thinking “So what, a woman detective.” I should tell you that the stories take place in the mid-1920s, and her partner in her adventures is this guy named Sherlock Holmes.

I’ll talk more about books later on, for now, I think I’m going to get some dinner.