One For The Books
WHYY has a show running in which it’s looking for America’s favorite 100 books, so it got me to thinking.
MYTH: First of all, let’s dispel this. People do NOT read more in the summer. The winter holds that distinction. The weather’s lousy, it’s freezing, often you’re iced or snowed in. This makes perfect sense. However, you tend to remember the books you’ve digested more in the summer than you do in the winter. (Who wants to remember anything in January?) It just feels like you read more in the summer when you’re on the beach, by a pool, or on a deck. The first time I read my all-time favorite book, “The Catcher in the Rye,” was on the sand and I swear I can still feel the sun deliciously beating down on me.
LIBRARIES: My mom was a voracious reader, but she was a Depression-era kid, and became accustomed to not spending money when you didn’t have to. So, we were constantly trudging back and forth to our neighborhood library. “Why spend money on a book when you can get it for free? It’s not like a piece of music that you are going to play for the rest of your life. So, there’s no reason to own it.” Thus, began my lifelong love of libraries that I still have today. Fred, my 26-year-old producer at 94WIP, doesn’t even know what a library is.
I, however, am not a Depression-era kid, and here’s the happy compromise I’ve reached. If I loan a book out of the library and I really love it, I then buy it, because the author and the publishing houses need to sell copies or they will go out of business. Plus, I love lending the book to a friend. (As long as I get it back, you thief!)
By the way, both Avalon and Stone Harbor have excellent libraries and you can also get audiobooks, CDs, and DVDs. I have such a wonderful relationship with my library that when a friend recommends a book or I read a review in a magazine, I email my contact at the library right on the spot from my iPhone and order it.
By the way, summer is also the time of the year when you spend more time in your car, and I’m nuts about audiobooks. If it’s an autobiography and read by the author, I swear it’s superior to reading it because you get the author’s tone and true meaning of a sentence. And if you’re looking for a good “summer” audiobook, Beach Boy Mike Love’s “Good Vibrations” is a terrific read. Way better than Brian Wilson’s books and you would think it would be the other way around.
HARDBACK OR SOFTCOVER? But here’s the oddity. Most booklovers I’m close with prefer a hardcover, yet I do not. I get that if it’s a book that you’ve been eagerly awaiting on and you just can’t wait a minute longer to read it, then you must have the hardback. I also admit hardbacks are better to show off at home if you buy into the Jerry Seinfeld theory that since so few books are reread, they’re really more like trophies.
But hardbacks are heavier to lug around and, besides, if you’re like me, you remove the dust jacket before you hit the beach because you don’t want to tatter it all up. So, what’s the point?
My favorite type of book is what’s known as a “trade” paperback. It’s almost as large as the hardcover and the print is larger and easier to read than the “standard” size paperback.
DOG-EAR OR BOOKMARK? I get infuriated when I get back a book that I’ve lent and it’s dog-eared. I don’t say anything or get rude about it, but I must admit I won’t be crazy about lending a book again to that same person.
I’m a bookmark guy and, dig this, I have been using the same bookmark that my daughter Keely made for me when she was in the third grade more than 20 years ago.
If something pops up in the book that I do want to remember, I yellow-highlight it. I figure someday someone else will read that copy and try to figure out why I highlighted it and hopefully it puzzles them. I’m warped, eh?
KINDLE: For whatever reason, I have not joined the Kindle scene. Maybe it’s because you can’t display it on your bookshelf like the aforementioned Seinfeld bit.
However, will someone please explain to me why you can view a Kindle screen perfectly on the beach and you can’t see anything whatsoever on your iPhone without pulling your shirt over your head or borrowing some shade off a neighboring beach umbrella? Look, I realize I never mastered the electric can opener, but cut us a break! It just doesn’t make any sense. A screen is a screen, right?
MY 10 FAVORITE BOOKS I READ ON THE BEACH: I read fiction on the beach, never nonfiction. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. Here’s my 10, in alphabetical order. (By the way, here’s a head’s up. Don’t read the book “Jaws.” It stinks. How Steven Spielberg made a classic film out of those pages is a miracle.)
“Red Dragon,” Thomas Harris: Hannibal Lecter’s even more terrifying in print.
“The World According to Garp,” John Irving: Weird, funny, sexy, what more do you need?
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Ken Kesey: It’s the movie, minus the jokes.
“Apt Pupil,” “The Stand,” “It,” Stephen King: I used to devour every word of every King novel, but while I was reading “It,” he released three new books and I gave up!
“Get Shorty,” Elmore Leonard: When asked why he was so successful, Leonard replied, “I don’t write the parts people skip.”
“The Godfather,” Mario Puzo: It fleshes out many characters that are only briefly featured in the flick.
“The Catcher in the Rye,” J.D. Salinger: My favorite book ever. Don’t ask why, it just is. I read it on the beach the summer between sixth and seventh grade. (By the way, I’m looking for a first edition.)
“Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories,” Jean Shepherd: If you love Ralphie and the gang in “A Christmas Story,” you’ll devour these vignettes.
Have fun!
