The first novel that I remember reading as a kid was
Battle Cry by Leon Uris.  The glory of war intrigued me then.  I’d had toy soldiers as a child and read war
comic books.  How ironic that, in the
Sixties, I became a vocal war critic.  Physically classified 4-F, I didn’t get to die in Vietnam to support the
domino theory of anti-communism. 

Also in the Sixties, as a college student, my
reading preferences expanded enormously.  I followed my nose.  Many authors
that I loved led me to others.  My
greatest source of new reading material was writer Henry Miller.  He was always mentioning the writers that had
influenced him and, since I liked him, I followed his lead. 

Originally an architectural engineering major, I
switched schools and areas of study, majoring in accounting.  Three terms of that was enough to cause me to
realize I did not want to be an accountant.  By then I’d had an inspiring English class; that became my area of
study.  The books began to pile up on my
makeshift, unpainted shelves, supported by concrete blocks. 

Augustine Birrell once said:  “Any ordinary man can…surround himself with
two thousand books…and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in
which it is possible to be happy.”  So
every time I moved, and there were so, so many times, the books got boxed up
and carted, unpacked and re-arranged in the new digs. 

Lately I have not been reading as much as I ought
to.  “The man who doesn’t read good
books,” Mark Twain has reminded me, “has no advantage over the man who can’t
read them.”  I have no excuse.  Several good books, as yet unread, sit within
easy reach.  I am halfway through two
others.  One entire wall in my living
room is shelved books: fiction, nonfiction, biography.  I pulled an old paperback from the shelf the
other day.  The price on the cover was 50
cents; I’ve had it for a long time.

Several of my books are by a writer I adore:  Jorge Luis Borges.  “I have always imagined,” he once said, “that
Paradise will be a kind of library.”  That would be okay with me.