Hello fellow readers! It’s been a while.
That’s right. “Been away, Now I’m back.”
Redesigning and improving the functionality of my website, as well as working on publishing my debut novel, has kept me quite busy, but since it’s finished, the site is open, and I’m excited to share my thoughts with you once again.
But first things first. Just in case you weren’t the recipient of my wife Alexis’ Facebook posts or emails these last couple of days, WRONGFUL ACTS is now published on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. You can find it here.
Availability elsewhere is also coming soon.
Now that you’ve had a chance to check out the book, either just now or yesterday, it’s time for my post. As this blog title states, I’m going to share some personal thoughts on the activity of reading. After all, this website is about writing, and my intended audience consists of readers. I hope you find this post as enjoyable to read as I did writing it, and that it recalls your own personal experiences and reflections on reading throughout your life.
Reading is a very individual and varied pursuit. Some read to learn, some for enjoyment, others for a thrill, some to escape everyday life. For me it’s a little bit of each of those reasons. After reading, feel free to share your thoughts on reading with me and your fellow readers here in the comments section, or on my Facebook personal or Author page which you can follow freely.
But before I start, it’s Trivia Time! So what actor/actress said “Been away, now I’m back,” and in what movie? Bonus points if you know the name of the movie’s fictional character.
Now then, where should I start? At the beginning, of course. What was the first book you remember reading? I don’t mean a child’s book read to you by a parent, but the one you first remember reading all by yourself.
When I was in middle school, maybe around twelve or thirteen years old, my father bought a Compton’s encyclopedia, and along with it came a series of books called Compton’s Bookshelf for Young Americans, a collection of thirty full-length biographies written especially for students in junior high school or older. I can’t remember how many of these I read, but two especially stand out in my mind.
The first I vividly remember was “Babe Didrikson Zaharias: Striving to be Champion.” Zaharias, whose given first name was Mildred Ella, was an American athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field. She won two gold medals in track and field while setting world records for both at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships! As a child, she was determined to become the best woman athlete in the world. Perhaps that’s where my fascination with golf began. This is a wonderful story with many lessons for age-appropriate youths on the value of setting goals, perseverance, and hard work. Totally inspiring.
The second book in this series which I remember reading was “Dag Hammarskjöld: Soldier of Peace.” Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, and at 47 when he was appointed in 1953, the youngest as of 2021. An awardee of the Nobel Prize, he is credited with fashioning the United Nation’s role in peace keeping around the world, especially in developing nations. Another amazing story for our youth of today and the future.
The remaining 28 books are similar biographies, although I must admit I don’t remember how many I read. And they are still available, so keep them in mind for children when they reach that middle school age. All these books portray great life role models.
In my mid-teens, I read most of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, which is the subject of a previous blog.
From there on, most of what I read was dictated by school requirements and included many classics of literature, including plays. I can’t begin to enumerate them all, but included a number of Hemingway novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is The Night” which I preferred to “The Great Gatsby,” and many others by various authors. My favorite plays were “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and Edward Albee’s “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
One book I never even came close to finishing—or even getting close to half way through—was “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens, relying on the Cliff Notes to get me through high school class discussions! If you google the book, people ask questions like “How long does it take to read Bleak House,” “Is Bleak House worth reading?” “Is Bleak House boring?” “Is Bleak House sad? Call me bad, but my answers would be, in order, “too long,” “No!” “Yes!” “Don’t know for the characters, but just looking at the thickness of the book made me sad!” Can’t say how I got through English class on that one! How about you?
You can read about some of the authors that have become my favorites as an adult on the My Story page of my website – tonysclama.com – where I also allude to my preferred genres, which include suspense/thriller fiction, sports, and history. Since I covered sports in my last blog, I’ll discuss some of my recent favorites in other genres in my next blog post.
Trivia answers: Jack Nicholson, “The Shining,” adapted from Stephen King’s horror novel, and Jack Torrance was the character.
Okay, that’s it for now. See you next time.
Tony