Books!

One of the things I am looking forward to in semi-retirement is reading. Lots of reading! I have a long relationship with books, and reading, and I expect it to intensify.

My first memory of reading a real book was when I was very young. Slatington didn’t really have a library, just a few shelves in a church basement. But we had the bookmobile from the Allentown Library. It would pull up at the corner of Dowell and Main Streets and sit there for two hours. The first book I borrowed was a biography of Thomas Jefferson. I can still picture the pale blue cover with Tom’s name inside a yellow cloud. I was hooked!

Slatington eventually did get a library and it was put in the old abandoned post office. To me it was a magical place. The overpowering smell of old books and the dusty card catalog, wonderful. It was a hangout place for us teens when I was in high school. Yes, we were wild and crazy guys!

In my senior year I played hooky one day just to finish reading Rosemary’s Baby. I had my dad’s permission. I know that if mom had still been living, she would have never let me take off.

I remember in my early twenties, Slatington Library needed to expand, and moved to the former Five and Ten farther up on Main Street. Volunteers, including myself, formed a book chain and passed the books one by one to their new home. Good times!

As an adult, and even more so recently, I have been reading about a book a week. Reading let’s you explore different lives and different places. When you get sick of all that is going on in society today, you can just pick up a book and escape.

Here are some of my favorite books: A Man Called Ove, Beartown, Jude the Obscure, An American Marriage, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Fathers Day, The Little Paris Bookshop, Our Souls at Night, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Wonder, Rosemary’s Baby, A Blessed Child, On a Day Like This, The Woman in the Dunes, Breakfast with Buddha, Angela’s Ashes, We Are Water, Heading Out to Wonderful, The Kite Runner, Gone Girl, and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Enjoy your day!