Reading History

Last night I thought about what I read a long time ago and came up with these.

First: The Comics and Charlie Brown books, that is, collections of strips

Elementary School Years: I don't remember that I read much except I read a lot of comic books (that's why I am cool about graphic novels now - been there, done that). I remember reading ghost stories and Howard Pyles' Book of Pirates (excellent illustrations in the flowery Maxfield Parrish-type style). Civil War stories, too.

In about 1965 or 1966, the first grown-up book I ever read was Louis Armstrong's autobiography Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans.

High School Years. I did not read regularly but I read all kinds of stuff. At 13 or 14 I remember reading a fistful of Dickens' novels and all the James Bond novels. I read Gone with the Wind (so I never have to read another romance novel). I read a couple of Irving Wallace novels (so I've never read James Michener ; I decided if I want history I'll just read history)

High school was the only period in which I often read the book after I saw the movie. For instance, In 1972, at 16, I read The Godfather and A Clockwork Orange (that sent me to a couple of Burgess' novels which I didn't really get). Other examples are The Exorcist, The Day of the Jackal and Slaughterhouse 5 (That sent me to all over Vonnegut's writing).

Then, I also read a lot guy adventure stuff like The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna and The Eiger Sanction and The Odessa File and those hare-brained violent novels of Robert Ludlum (that's why I don't read James Paterson and others like him, been there, read that), but I also read Ross MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, and other hard-boiled writers.

College: I read contemporary best-selling fiction, the only period in my life when I did that: Looking for Mr Goodbar, Ragtime, Burr, and novels by Philip Roth. I think I had some yen to understand mainstream culture.

Since the 1980s I let books find me and read what falls into my lap.