Another Year of Great Reading

Though I’ve never broken the top 10 in the reading contest, I always like to think I’d score near the top of the heap for variety. Every reader has genres that he or she favors and steers away from. Perhaps some of my fellow contestants read a lot of graphic novels; others favor mysteries, thrillers, and police procedurals. Still others gravitate toward history and biography, science, or Westerns.

Year after year, every year, I read at least a little of nearly type. And not because the three different book discussion groups to which I belong force me to. If anything, my personal taste is more catholic than all three book groups put together.

In 2013 read portions of various mystery series (Ed McBain, Nicolas Freeling, Ian Rankin, A.C. Baantjer, Bartholomew Gill, John Brady), sampled a little graphic fiction (Green Lantern Chronicles, Daredevil: Vision Quest), dipped into recent science fiction (William Gibson’s Spook Country and David Brin’s Existence; both okay, nothing spectacular), and zipped through the Hunger Games trilogy (actually quite enjoyable, but I skipped the movies).

I read pop culture history and bios (several Jack Nicholson biographies, Tanya Lee Stone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie, Peter Carlin’s Bruce; and Mickey Dolenz’s memoir I’m a Believer and Andrew Sandoval’s day-by-day account of The Monkees because, after all, I had tickets to see the three surviving band members at the Schnitz in August).

2014 Meditation on Reading

It’s awfully tempting to state that reading makes life worth living.

But that can’t be right. I can think immediately of other activities that give greater, deeper pleasure than a book: an excellent meal, a conversation with an old friend, lovemaking, seeing a beautiful, wild place for the first time, or returning to one filled with memories from long ago.

Yet I’ve spent far more time in my life reading than engaging in -- or even pursuing -- any of those other activities.

So what’s the difference? Perhaps reading is more dependable. Those other peak experiences may be more intense, may deliver more … but they rarely last as long. You can’t keep up a great dinner, a conversation, or an intimate encounter for hours on end, the way you can enjoy a good book.

The Beatles Are Forever, Absolutely. . . .

Tonight marks a half century since The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1964. A record 73 million viewers saw that broadcast on Feb. 9 fifty years ago. It landed the band its U.S. recording contract with Capitol Records and launched the British Invasion.

I didn’t see the show. (Actually, I’ve never seen it.) I was not quite five years old, and we did not have a television in the house. (My parents were opposed to the technology, and I’m glad they were.) But for me, as for so many millions of others -- not only in the U.S. and UK, but around the world -- the Beatles created the soundtrack for our lives. In the form of their songs, they were an ongoing presence, a consolation and a source of pure joy, not only for the six short years thereafter, but forever after.

It couldn’t have been very long after that Sullivan broadcast that I heard my first tune by the Fab Four. It was “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”, and I heard it on the kitchen radio over the stove. Since my father was a piano teacher and had an extensive collection of vinyl LPs of classical and jazz music, as well as the Living Shakespeare spoken-word excerpts from the plays, I had a sensitive ear for organized sounds. As I remember, I was alone in the kitchen, and the song stopped me cold.