Sorry for the late posting this week! I’ve been celebrating my birthday! Yep, all week!
If you are looking for an interesting mystery to read over the holidays, pick up my book Along the River Road from Amazon KDP. The book is available in digital format AND NOW in paperback!
One question I typically get from my friends and readers concerns the latest book I am reading. The question is not so much because I am such an esteemed purveyor of literary excellence, but because my reading interests have been described as quirky and eclectic. One month I am avidly reading the history of the ‘ukelele (The ‘Ukelele: A History by J. Tranquada and J. King, 2012).
The next month I am slogging my way through the substantial research presented in Capital in the 21st Century by T. Piketty (2017).
Only to follow-up with a bestseller like The Girl on the Train (P. Hawkins, 2016).
I have often times found myself finishing a book that I severely disliked or had difficulty “getting into” simply so I could not only clearly explain why the book failed to impact me, but also to try to pull one personally redeeming quality from the reading. I paid good money, so I would like to get something out of it besides a donation to the local library. By the way, the book on capital was excellent research with some rather astonishing findings, but it was an intellectually challenging read—still satisfying, nonetheless.
So, yuh, quirky!
I’ve been a reader ever since I was a young child. My mother read books to us (my sister and I) daily. Some of the books she would purchase, the rest she would take us to our city library conveniently located about five blocks away in the suburbs of Orange County, California.
Our public library was a modest, unadorned one story, rectangular building with a small book slot off to the side of the rather plain glass front door embossed with stenciled letters informing patrons of the daily hours. Later, after my sister and I became proficient at safe bicycle riding, we would ride our bikes over to the library.
During the summer, every couple of days we would hop on our bikes for the ten-minute ride to the library. We would dutifully drop off our maximum of two books per patron and proceed to select two more. I remember once, during my book checkout process, a rather new librarian remarked that I should make sure I will read the book before checking it out
(inferring that I was not really reading the books!)
And though I was puzzled by her statement 
(after all I was only nine years old),
I happily pedaled home and proceeded to spend the next two hours of my early afternoon engrossed in another world with new friends. By the end of the next day, I said farewell to these friends and met up with other characters in a new story. After all, it was summer and after chores were done, I was free to read for a couple hours or so each day.
Usually, my childhood summers were spent helping my mother with deep cleaning chores around the house, and doing some yard work, like pulling weeds. As I got older, I used a push-mower to cut down grass blades that constantly grew because every other morning I would be out moving the lawn sprinkler around the yard to make sure the entire yard grew and stayed green.
Later, my father finally caught on to this absurd Sisyphus-contented, suburban-accepted mindset,
and had a swimming pool installed with a garden area comprised of drought-resistant plants. This greatly minimized my water sprinkler duties while also ridding myself of lawn mowing during the summer.
I was a much happier child after that! 
The rest of my summertime was devoted to playing gin rummy with my mother and older sister,
ironing clothes, practicing my guitar 
and playing softball. (I am in the photo below somewhere!)
At sometime, usually toward the end of summer, we would take a family vacation– in the family station wagon (More about family vacations in the Studebaker in a later posting.).
In the midst of all that, I wrote.
I wrote songs with my guitar. I wrote poems and short stories. I wrote mini-musicals about science things like igneous rocks, yellows stars, and energy sources. I also dabbled in one-act plays (that probably went nowhere).
Then, I would read some more. . . ride my bike back to the library the next afternoon to spend part of that afternoon meeting new friends again.
So, what am I reading now? Nothing.
I am in-between books.
I just finished re-reading Daniel Goleman’s book Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception as it just seemed appropriate to revisit the topic now.
My next guilty reading-pleasure will be the Clinton/Patterson book The President is Missing. Saving it for my long holiday airplane ride. It should make the air travel tolerable.
Next month, I’ll cover the childhood books that have made the deepest impressions on my heart and mind.
Thanks for sharing a small part of your week with me!
SC
