I was never a reader in school and I only remember a couple of the books I took the time to read for class, The Scarlet Letter and Hamlet. When I joined the military my habits changed. Books from Tom Clancy, I devoured daily along with my fascination with the Vietnam War.
Today it has gotten to the point if I don’t read before bed, I am unable to fall asleep. This has carried over to my family as we all read something before lights out.
This weekend we were cleaning off a bookshelf to give to our daughter for her new apartment. It’s impossible to keep every book we read in the house and why should we. Let someone else enjoy these stories instead of just sitting around collecting dust.
So we pulled out an empty box and started filling it to give away. A lot of the books were those that we read to the kids before they could even spoke. Almost every night we read to them things like The Magic Treehouse series, To Market, No David, and when Christmas came around we had several large books to draw from.
Over the years I’ve tried to keep track of everything I’ve read. I do this mainly so I won’t re-read a book, but even with my diligence in documentation, this still happens. I joined Goodreads web site in 2011 and entered every book I’ve read into it. Today it hit 1000 books read.
That’s about 26 books a year since I was 18 years old. Since the time I’ve been keeping track of how many I read a year, 2003, the lowest number of books read per year is 20 with the highest being 117 books a year. Man that was a lot of books. Lately I am on a cool and steady pace of about 35 books a years with a balance of 12 fiction, 12 non-fiction, and 12 audios.
I told my kids when they started reading in earnest that they should read at the very least per year, one classic, one biography, one non-fiction, and the rest whatever you can find. Now I would add one more category, the motivational/inspirational book to remind you that goals in life are important and you should be motivated and inspired to reach new heights. We are not here just to breathe the air.
Looking over what I’ve read I would be hard pressed to say which one is my favorite book or even to mention my favorite author. The list and my memory does tell me that I stopped reading author’s like Tom Clancy and that I once loved Lee Child but can’t stand to pick up another book. That James Rollins has fell out of my scope. Stephen King still intrigues me but his books are no longer a religion with me.
I also don’t like when authors who have passed away, but their work continues being penned by others, like Vince Flynn or Robert B. Parker’s works are. I considered James Patterson a corporation and very hard to enjoy any book with his name on it, although there have been some really good books.
I do know my least favorite book, William Brinkley’s Last Ship. Followed closely by Jon Fasman’s The Geographer’s Library.
My favorite classic: Dracula. Least favorite: Catch 22. Favorite Bio: Billy Crystal’s Still Foolin’em Best Non-fiction authors: Erik Larson and Malcom Gladwell. And Author Og Mandino for your soul.
My passion for books almost rivals my love of music. Read and learn, achieve and have a wonderful adventure in your imagination and your life.
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