I have never considered myself a very competent reader.  I don’t have a memory for ideas and details like my brother, who can recall peculiar lines from movies verbatim after one sitting, and facts from articles and books that are relevant to life, for which I have no filing system in my brain.  I am not a particularly fast reader, unlike my sister who can motor through a decent novel in an evening. I have yet tried to read “good books” throughout my adult life, although I can probably  only accurately summarize only about 2% of the books I have ever read for you. Still, I have loved reading since being in college (I recall actually avoiding it for most of my junior high and high school years, for some reason, though), and have embraced or been transformed by a few books (or authors) in my life.  At some point I discovered the power of words, and the beauty of how certain phrases were assembled, and the incredible vehicle for emotion that words could make. I read mostly for feeling, for imagery, for general understanding, and to enjoy the magic of creatively composed phrases and sentences.

Here, with little explanation, is a short history of the books and authors that have made impressions on my thinking and my life.

Youth

The Encyclopedia Brown Series.  This is the first series I remember reading  and loving as a kid.

The Great Brain Series.  This series has special meaning to me because my sister loved these books first, and she let me read her copies.  I discovered they were great reads, and as a result, have ever since thought of my sister when I think of these books.

The Phantom Tollbooth.  I actually remember little from reading this book as a youngster, but again, my sister loved it and loaned it to me, so it is special because of her recommend.

The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok (along with all of his other books).  Read as a sophomore in high school, I discovered in Potok’s writing and characters feelings that I understood and boys that I related to (or wanted to be like).  Potok’s devout and conflicted young men spoke to me as I grew up wanting to live in the world and yet be a person of substantial faith. Potok is the first author that I discovered who spoke to me, and in whose books I saw the conflicts faced by those wanting to walk with God and still be part of non-pious communities.  Potok lit the flame in me that made want to read- although it flickered for a few years before the fire really took.  Potok has remained a voice in my life as I have wandered from youth into middle age.

The College Years

Willa Cather. Required to read “My Antonia” for a class, I discovered in Cather an artist who painted pictures of frontier life so clear in my mind that I found myself fully present in the lives and locales within that book.  Willa’s painting with words led me to want more of the spaces and places she had created in her books.  She is the first author that I read serially.

It was in an English class in college that I discovered classical literature, and specifically American writers who lived and worked from the 1920’s through the 1940’s and 50’s.  And it was actually one book that opened a door for me to hunger for more writings that came out of that period.

Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson.  The book that started me journey into pre-war American literature.  I loved this book because each story in it was short, terse, and about the private lives of different people in that small town.

Hemingway.  It was just a short walk for me to discover Hemingway, and to get drunk on his prose.  An introverted, sedentary college kid, I was inebriated by the emotion and romanticism conveyed by his writing.  I read everything of his I could get my hands on for 6-7 months. I learned what powerful action prose looked like from his works.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you read Hemingway, you end up having to spar with Fitzgerald  for a few rounds.  I remember little from the 2 books or so I read, but they colored my vision of those times.

Sinclair Lewis.  I loved discovering Lewis because his main characters were generally grotesque and morally repulsive- but so entertaining. His books were morality tales of sordid destruction, but so engaging.

John Steinbeck.  In time, it was inevitable I would encounter Steinbeck, and when I did, his writing was a revelation.  I was mesmerized how he could convey the feelings and weaknesses of characters through description, and how he could just describe conflicts faced common to every human heart.  Steinbeck also won my attention due to his incredible ability to describe places- terrain, light, panoramas. I loved Hemingway’s, but after I finished one of his novels, I always felt like I had a hangover and had to come back to reality and recover from the emotional roller coaster.  I put down a Steinbeck novel, and I feel like I see the world more clearly, with sobriety and tranquility.