Books & Why I Like Reading Part One

Today is Thursday, December Twelfth Two Thousand Oh Nine. You may notice that I write out numerals except in the title, well I like how they look. Always have, I guess I like words in general. I read two shitty books of fiction a week as an average, the better fiction take me a bit longer because I can't plow thru them as quickly.

When I was a kid my parental units would only let me watch television for a few hours a week and only on the weekends. I used to rush home from school and watch television before my mom came home and the first thing she would do was to place her hand on top of the TV set to see if it was warm and then yell at me if it was. I would like to say that I discovered some sort of work around to that but I didn't and since we only had one television until the late 1980's I would always get busted.

So since I wasn't allowed to watch television I read books. Lots of them. I will never forget two books that I read when I was twelve or thirteen that had a major impact on me. The first was "Forever" by Judy Blume and it was about two kids having sex for the first time. As a early teenager I was very interested in girls, what they had to offer, how they were different, and why they smelled so good most of the time. The second book was "Christine" by Stephen King. That book totally freaked me out and scared the crap out of me. I will never forget finishing it at night in my bed and not being able to sleep. I found that in the days before cable, pay per view, and VHS that there were many topics, descriptions, and accounts therof available in books and nowhere else.

In my family there is a culture of reading that I feel very lucky to have been brought up in. It was not uncommon for the four of use to all be reading at the same time, only in different parts of the house. When I visit my folks in Maine now as an adult, many hours are spent reading and looking at the ocean. Books are always a popular and wanted gift at birthdays and holidays and it is very important to write something in the first few pages when you give a book to someone else. I guess it personalizes the book and it can be looked at long after the special day is over.

I mainly read fiction and I don't set the bar very high in what I am interested in. I have a friend or two that I contact when I want something meaty but most of the time I am content with just reading. I commute and hour or so each way on the MBTA and reading makes what can be an unpleasant journey into something much easier to deal with. I also read for at least thirty minutes before I got to sleep every night, I find it always makes for interesting dreams.

I won't go into specifics right now as to what authors I like because I think that each one deserves their own blog entry. When I find an author I like I generally will seek out everything they have written so that I am very familiar with their style. I like books and writing for many of the same reasons I like music. It enjoyable, activates the mind, gives me something to do, and it is something that I have little or no talent in doing for myself.