Books! Books! And More Books!

I can't really remember a time without books.

My parents read to me. And they read for themselves. They read books-- fiction, history, biographies, all sorts of books. Magazines galore. Journals. Letters. Pretty much everything readable. I don't recall what they read to me early on, just them reading to me. And I recall reading, well before starting school.

I had my first public library card by age 5 (or maybe 4). The librarian wouldn't listen to me about what I wanted and insisted on taking me to the section with picture books and stone simple kid stuff. I got two giant, picture books. One was a book of dinosaurs with maybe one fact per page, and the other was a joke book, with a question on one side and an answer on the other. Example:

• What did the large firecracker say to the small firecracker?
• My pop's bigger than your pop!

While I loved the play on words, I read them both within five minutes-- including time to tell several of the jokes to my family. I reread them until I knew them by heart (fifteen minutes?) I went back the next day to get more books.

"Did you really read those?"

"Yes, ma'am. A lot of times."

She quizzed me, developing a funny look on her face. But she took me to the chapter book section and let me pick my own books. She'd always quiz me, but I figured out it was more fun for her than anything else.

Once school started, I got a school library card and a bookmobile card. I often had the max checked out on all three cards.

I don't recall too many Dr Seuss books, though I recall Yertle the Turtle and Horton Hears a Who. I discovered Tom Swift, Jr and then Tom Swift, Sr by third or fourth grade, and the Hardy Boys sometime around then. I read all the science fiction, mystery, adventure, and scary books (Hitchcock, Poe, and Lovecraft, especially) I could find. I liked history and biographies. I read the Bible. I would look up a word in the dictionary and end up reading for several pages. The same thing happened with encyclopedias. I'd get an atlas to find where something was, and end up devouring cities, states, countries, or continents.

Mom introduced me to science fiction and fantasy. Dad introduced me to history and biographies. My sisters got me hooked on Nancy Drew and the Bobsey twins. My friends, a babysitter, and the doctor's office got me into a serious comic book addiction. I'd read my parents' magazines-- I especially liked Readers Digest. I found a MAD Magazine in ninth grade and kept reading them until a few years ago.

I also liked coloring books and painting books. With these, I could tell the story as much as read a story. I think this actually prepared me as a writer since graphical art was never a real strength. But I loved story and coloring or painting-- especially a story line (or several, especially intertwined)-- was just another vehicle for that.

In fifth grade, a couple of popular books were always checked out in the school library. Mrs. Clark, God bless her, ended up reading them to us. We could have read them ourselves, but the library only had one copy and we didn't all want to buy them. One of these books as Louise Fitzugh's Harriet the Spy. Another was L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Both of these books spoke to everyone in the class, from the geeks to the cheerleaders, from the jocks to the Beatles wannabes. They are still near the top of my list, many years later.

About the same time, Mom got me more hooked on science fiction with the golden and silver age pulps-- Amazing Stories, Astounding, Galaxy, SF&F, Asimov's SF, and more. That was also about the time we got into UFOs; I devoured those magazines as well. I started watching every science fiction, adventure, horror movie or show I could, and story became even more a part of my life. I would spin tales weaving elements of all these together. The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift vs Godzilla and the Giant Robots of Death vs the Radioactive Mutant Ants and the Roller Derby Queens. (I found the latter both awesome and scary.)

Meanwhile I was also reading Dad's chemistry journals. Or trying to. I was determined. His dozens of histories and historical novels also took root in my psyche. I read up on all my heroes (from the Lone Ranger and Tonto to Edison and Einstein to Washington, Lincoln, and Kennedy).

At twelve, Mom handed me Schmitz's The Witches of Karres. I was already reading Andre Norton, so strong women protagonists were fine with me. But the story here! This is still one of my all time favorites, by which all others are judged. Claude Thompson drug me into the Mushroom Planet books and the world of Freddy the Pig.

The next milestone, a major turning point, was at fourteen, when I followed Mom into Middle Earth. Tolkein tore almost everything I knew apart, carried me off on an adventure, and left me in a brave, new world. I reread these over and over. I have read Lord of the Rings at least once a year since, The Hobbit nearly as much.

I'd already found a law book or two from Mom's and Dad's college days, and pored through those. Dan Croft and I started reading every legal document we could find. We decided we were lawyers and wrote ever longer documents full of all the flowery legalese we could come up with, going back and forth with our complaints against one another. If we could use several sentences instead of a phrase, we were delirious. I'm pretty certain I once got a whole page out of a basic salutation. But we could only do it because of what we were reading.

This actually helped me later when I had to decipher government technical requirements for traffic control systems and write proposals, RFPs, and other documents to win or fulfill government contracts. I can still crank up the fluff-o-meter when I need to.

I got into electronics. I read dozens of books on theory and practice, learning both vacuum tubes and solid state. I practically memorized the 1970 ARRL Handbook. My current electronics favorite is the Radiotron Designer's Handbook, Fourth Edition, a masterpiece of technical brilliance.

I am leaving out any number of subjects-- books and magazines on guitars, guitar playing, guitar players, amplifiers, guitar repair, just to cover one set of interests.

I read less than I used to, but only because I now write more. I still reread favorites. I usually have several books in progress scattered around the house.

I like eBooks OK, and there's nothing handier for a trip. But I still love "real" books, paper books. The smell. The feel. The fact that if I drop one in the bathtub, I have only lost one book, as opposed to far more money in electronics.

We have a well worn (we inherited it with a house we rented) Webster's Third International Dictionary (Unabridged)-- that huge, beige tome you would find on a hefty stand at your old school library. It weighs thirteen pounds. We love it. It still gets used... and read.

I really need to go through and get rid of books that are not very good, or which I just don't care about. It's tough, though, because they're... books. But we only have so much shelf space, and just as people sometimes wonder out of our lives, so have some of these books. But letting them go means room for new ones. And that's always a Good Thing.

Top Ten? Hah! My Top 25 will vary over time, but some would always be in it. Here are the books I consider my Top 25 at the moment (not necessarily in order):

1. Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkein)
2. Perelandra (C. S. Lewis)
3. A Wrinkle in Time (Madelaine L'Engle)
4. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzugh)
5. The Witches of Karres (Joseph Schmitz)
6. The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle)
7. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)
8. To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth (Jeff Cooper)
9. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein)
10. The Two Faces of Tomorrow (James Hogan)
11. Perilous Dreams (Andre Norton)
12. The Valley of Fear (A. Conan Doyle)
13. Retief's War (Keith Laumer)
14. Radiotron Designers Handbook 4E
15. The Firebrand (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
16. The Message Bible
17. Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy Sayers)
18. Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
19. Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
20. Code of the West series (Stephen Bly)
21. Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling)
22. Madman in Waco (Blair / Darden)
23. The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula Leguin)
24. Classics in Software Engineering (Edward Nash Yourdon)
25. The Krytos Trap (Michael Stackpole)

For many of authors, it was hard to pick one book, and the book would vary from day to day. In the case of The Krytos Trap, I could have picked any novel from the Star Wars X-Wing series. I picked the Christie and Sayers books almost at random; they wrote so many excellent stories. It pained me to leave off Chesterton and others. Another day, they would have made the cut and someone else would have missed it, but the authors/series above are always on my reread list.

Who are your favorite authors? What are your go to books?