0
0
One afternoon in my late twenties, I was reading a book called In Cold Blood. Written by Truman Capote, the book is about the author’s journey from reading a news item in the New York Times about a murder of an entire family in Kansas one night. This really happened.
Capote became so curious to find out what happened that he went to Kansas, then ultimately found the murderer who walked him through that night when he went through the house and killed all the children and parents. Step by step, room by room.
As I read the re-telling of this unthinkable horror, I remember getting up and locking the door to my apartment because I felt concerned that maybe the Kansas murderer, or some other murderer, might come into my house and kill me. It wasn’t rational, but it happened. This was the powerful emotion I felt reading about how this cold-blooded killer went through a house and eliminated a family.
I don’t remember ever feeling as much fear reading a book as I did reading that one; no other book I’ve read has prompted me to lock my front door. The palpable emotions that experience stirred in me resonate now as I reflect on a book I just finished reading titled I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel. She writes: “Can every devoted reader point back to the book that hooked them on the story? I’d like to think so. Not a book they appreciate, or grudgingly respect, but the one that captivated them, the one they didn’t want to put down, the one that made them decide, for themselves, to make reading of their life, forever.”
For me In Cold Blood was that book I read that still resonates for its utter awfulness of what human beings can do. It wasn’t the book that made me decide I wanted to read for the rest of my life regularly; soon after college I had committed to that. But In Cold Blood made me feel something that made me uncomfortable. That’s the power of reading at times.
The author writes about reading with extraordinary devotion and love for the reading life she has spent so much time committed to, devoted to, in love with. The book is remarkable for its honesty and love for reading books and sharp focus on all things reading: going to the library several times a day; same with bookstores, how to stack them on your home bookshelves; why the acknowledgement sections of books should not be bypassed because they’re filled with gems.
All this and so much more book-related written in a way that’s as easy to take in as a nap on a lazy summer afternoon, the prose unfolding with elegance and disciplined simplicity, stunningly unpretentious. It would be hard to imagine anyone writing a book that convinces you the author loves reading books more than this one does. Hundreds and thousands of books she’s read, so many she has forgotten so many. Books she’s read are like one big mystery, a sea of words and books spread across oceans, all books she’s read, and yet candid about how many more books she’ll never have time to read. And isn’t that so true, that no matter how many books we read, we will never read even .0001 percent of all the books there are to read, even if for the rest of our lives we do nothing but read? In pursuit of knowing everything, of learning everything, or reading everything, we have no chance of getting all that done.
We’re born and no matter how many books we read there are so many we’ll never read and that’s just the truth. We get an incomplete for the assignment guaranteed.
She points out something I hadn’t thought of that made me think: books outlive people. So true. We’re here for a while; many books stick around much longer. If we grab one and read it while we’re here, or ten or a hundred or a thousand, that’s a random chance, and then 100 years from now, those books may still be around and someone else will read them, or not.
The book made me examine my reading habits and life. My biggest regret is not reading as many books while growing up as I did. I believe I wasted time and missed out on countless reading experiences. In college and beyond, I’ve caught up, reading quite a bit, but knowing I started late. I focused on fine-tuning my basketball skills instead of reading books, and my first thought is that those basketball skills did not help me write better, whereas reading more books as a kid may have. My misgivings; not a big deal, but real still.
The author writes about how some books move us so emotionally that we cry. “I don’t relish crying over a book, but I’ll say this: it’s not easy to earn a reader’s tears – and if an author writes well enough to earn mine, I’m in.”
Never, to the best of my memory, have I cried while reading a book or soon thereafter or years later reflecting on it. But I have felt emotions such as sadness reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald because for the entire book he shares stories and events while a student at Princeton University that made him unhappy, and he never relents, not even on the last page. I felt bad for him, having lived that experience and then put himself through it again by writing about it. And I admired his courage for not trying to insert a rosy ending, but ending the book with nothing but a sad final sentence. I remember the book for being so sad and never even trying to say things got better.
Another book, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, inspired me to become a writer because I could sense the writer was having fun writing about the absurdities of war. Writing could be fun and non-formulaic and even ridiculous – that turned me on. Rules didn’t have to be followed – that turned me on. Absurdity and paradoxes are integral to life so just have fun with it as a coping strategy, to take control of what you can in a world tough to control – that turned me on.
It all came down to pleasure. I wanted to do something for the rest of my life that I enjoyed, and if I could write in a free-wheeling way that Joseph Heller did in Catch-22, I could see that being a worthwhile way to live my life. It has been. Credit goes to Heller for showing me writing doesn’t have to follow patterns and can be unpredictable and illogical, and wilder than a lion in the forest who hasn’t eaten for a week. War is bad, but laughter helps us feel better even amid terrible situations.
I may not be here writing this right now had I not been assigned that book to read in a high school English class. It lit my writing candle, and it continues to burn. It’s a forest fire all ablaze if you want to know the truth.
The author addresses the quirky challenge many of us seem to have in explaining why we like a book so much.
“It’s easy enough for me to say ‘I liked that book,’ or ‘I didn’t,’ but I often struggle to explain why. I’m constantly surprised at how difficult it is to articulate my thoughts on what I’ve read in a way that is coherent, useful, and enjoyable.”
I had this experience trying to explain to people why I believe The Tender Bar is the best book that I’ve read in 20 years or maybe ever. Here I am some 10 years after reading it still thinking about it. When people ask me why I love the book, it is sometimes hard for me to articulate why. It just touched me somewhere deep.
I’ll try now. The book is about a young boy growing up in a broken home on Long Island who, around the age of 1,0 discovers books and starts reading. He demonstrates a flair for writing. Ultimately, he ends up at Yale University, hungering to become a writer, working while doubting himself. Then one day he sits down and writes The Tender Bar about his life, much spent at the neighborhood bar drinking with the locals who become his family.
He battles alcohol problems, not surprisingly, but his book becomes a bestseller and gets made into a movie. The life he dreamed of came true. The story is my imagined life story in a way. Since college, I have known I wanted to become a writer and write something great like The Tender Bar. There have been plenty of hurdles and doubts, and I haven’t attained fame in any way. The books I write and submit to publishers and agents get rejected and ignored. But I persist just as the author of The Tender Bar, J. R. Moehringer, did.
He hit it big; not me, I. That’s fine. Today’s tasks are the same for me as I suppose they are for him. Writing more, seeking to express ourselves, and reading more. Fame is probably overrated. It’s the doing, the writing, that fulfills.
I guess I love that book – notice how I’m not sure how to express it – because he pulled off something special that I would like to also. He made me feel that if you stick to your craft of writing, maybe one day people will recognize that and be lifted up so that they can accomplish whatever they yearn for.
The author of this reading book shares one of those insights that when you read it, you think, “Oh yes, I know what she means. I’ve had that experience.”
She writes: “I don’t carefully plan – and yet it’s uncanny how often I seem to be reading just the right book at just the right time. Sometimes I feel compelled to read a book – for reasons I can’t discern, and only later do I find it’s essential to me, right then. Not before I started reading it, but after. The book may seem random when I choose it, but halfway through, I realize I need this right now.”
As affirmation of her observation, I feel right now that this book about the love of reading books is what I needed to be reading now. Can’t tell you exactly why. But I just know. I feel it inside. When I read a book like this one, I am reminded that there’s this whole world inside books that we can go into and explore, and these mental experiences are endless. Being reminded in this book about the sheer beauty of reading a book also reaffirms to me that there are parts of life that are wonderful. Books are gifts to us that, if we open and read them, we will find this out. Some books pull me in more than others, and I read some for different reasons than others. Some I read for work to understand the latest technologies and what they mean, some for tips on how to write better, some to help me grow in my career or get along better with people, some for pleasure, some to get grounded again in what’s important.
This book reminded me that reading a book is one of the greatest experiences life has to offer.
Author Profile
-
Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page
Latest entries
BonusApril 21, 2025Book That Asks the Big Questions Beautifully
BonusApril 18, 2025Good Friday Was Actually Bad – Or Am I Missing Something?
BonusApril 14, 2025Breaking: NBA To Only Broadcast Western Conference Playoffs – Ignoring Eastern Conference
BonusApril 13, 2025Sportface to ChatGPT: Quit Asking Me Questions
