I was raised in a household that valued education. But, being a blue-collar household in a largely blue-collar community, luxuries were in short supply. Sure, we had some books around the house – my big sister’s complete set of the Nancy Drew mystery series comes to mind – but not many, and certainly not the latest hot literary fiction or New York Times bestsellers. (Or the New York Times, for that matter.)
Fortunately, however, our community had a public library. Continue reading
With the fiftieth anniversary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest almost upon us, I’d like to share a personal reminiscence about one of my all-time favorite authors, the great Ken Kesey.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that the reading experience is not only a subjective one, but is highly situational. By that I mean that reading The Catcher in the Rye at age fifteen is a fundamentally different experience than reading it at age forty. Because while books do not age, their readers, and the world their readers inhabit, surely do. And when the right book and the right reader meet at the right time under the right circumstances, magic happens. Continue reading