About Me

I’m a pretty average guy – middle aged, middle class, mid-career, pretty middle of the road when it comes to political orientation.  There are very few things in my life that deviate too drastically from whatever mean you might be able to calculate.  One of those very rare examples involves my reading, my books and my library.  I love to read, I’m a passionate collector and there are very few things that bring me greater pleasure than a really good book.

This isn’t new for me.  It’s actually one of those things that has consistently defined me across the years.  I took to books at a pretty early age and I have to thank my Dad for this one.  While I don’t have a clear memory of this, I’m sure that both of my parents spent plenty of time reading to me when I was too young to do it myself.  What I do remember – dimly – is the time my Dad spent transitioning me from a listener to a reader.  Interestingly enough, he managed to do it using something he loved as a boy – The Hardy Boys.

Here’s my memory – the two of us started with Dad reading those books to me at bedtime.  As he did so – he would force me to spell out words and sound them out – starting small but always gently pushing me forward until I began to fumble through full sentences.  Over time, I wound up doing very little listening and a whole lot of reading – until he eventually stepped out of the picture and turned me loose.  As a Dad myself – knowing how precious the time you spend truly connecting with your kids really is – I never thought about what a bitter sweet moment that transition probably represented for him.  For me, it was a defining transition.

While Dad taught me to love them, it was Mom who would bring me to the Mall – in the days of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller – on a weekly basis to buy the next book in the series.  That started out as an easy job.  We’d walk in, find the Hardy Boys shelf, pull out the next volume in the series and head for the counter.  Once I was home, I was perfectly content for days.  Thank god Franklin W. Dixon had been writing since 1927 – I had plenty of stories to work through.  The Hardy Boys pretty much took me right into Middle School.

I think my only other reading outlets were the Scholastic books that you could occasionally buy through your elementary school reading classes.  I remember bringing catalogs home, reading through them, picking out simple soft covers, filling out order forms, bringing them back and turning them into the teacher.  A few weeks later, the books would arrive and be distributed by the teacher.  Those were  AWESOME days.

In Middle School, however, things started to change.  For the first time in my life, I started to explore a decent library and I found a couple of amazing new topics to fall in love with.  The first was science fiction and I can remember where it started – “Tunnel In The Sky” by Robert A. Heinlein.  That one hooked me and, in short order, I’d read through every Heinlein novel in the Middle School library.  From Heinlein, I graduated to Asimov – the I Robot stories and the Foundation Trilogy.  At some point, my Science Fiction habit bled over into Fantasy – probably because both genres shelved in the same section in both bookstores – and I met my first true love – J.R.R Tolkein.

After that it was Katie Bar The Door and the Hardy Boys became a pretty dim memory.  To this day, Science Fiction and Fantasy is my crack.  I can’t get enough and I hope – when I die – I do it in bed with a new book laying on my chest.  My trips to Waldenbooks and B. Dalton’s became very different experiences.  I would walk in, find the Science Fiction section, carefully go through every single shelf, pull out every interesting new title I could find, stack them on the floor and then sit down and read through the blurbs until I found the ones that looked most promising.  At that point, I think I was probably starting to drive my poor Mom a little crazy.

My second area of interest – strange as it might seem – turned out to be WWII history.  I don’t even know how it happened but I somehow stumbled across John Toland’s “Battle:  The Story Of The Bulge”.  It fascinated me and I started to give the topic equal attention.  By the time I found “The Longest Day” by Cornelius Ryan, I had a second hook in my mouth and I started to explore other periods – particularly Classical Greece and Rome.  I think the entry point here was actually Greek and Roman mythology – I still have an ancient, well-used hardcover edition of “Bulfinch’s Mythology” – but that became real when Mom handed me down a very fine, three volume hardcover edition of Gibbon’s “History Of The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire”.  In a very similar way, my entry point into Medieval history was a fascination with the tales of King Arthur.

By the time I was in High School, I discovered two huge enablers – the Science Fiction Bookclub and the History Bookclub.  My parents were kind enough to feed my addiction and never really objected to paying for the books I asked for from these two wonderful Amazon precursors.  I still have a bunch of those old Science Fiction Bookclub editions in multiple boxes in my basement.

I’ve done a lot of fun things over the course of my life – had a lot of different jobs – been married – raised kids – lived overseas – but this one thing has been a constant.  From the Middle School Library to Waldenbooks and B. Daltons to my Bookclubs to Borders to Barnes & Nobles to Amazon – the dealer may have changed but the drug remains the same.  I’m in my 50’s now with a whole lot to be thankful for…and one of the most important is a lifetime of amazing, wonderful, entertaining, educational, humorous, broadening stories.

Thank goodness for my books – and thank goodness for my family who love me enough to appreciate just how happy they make me.