I have been reading since about the fifth grade. I know this is kind of late and sad by todays standards of forcing the little ones to read by kindergarten, but those were different times. My first real book was Charlotte’s Web. We all got a laugh out of the farmer putting his knee to Wilber’s behind to get him to move. It was a couple of years before I really started reading a lot of stuff of my own choosing. A teacher gave me a stack of old sci-fi magazines and I was hooked for life. There was everything my seventh grade impressible little mind could want. Monsters and girls, science and girls, guns and girls, and most interesting of all, girls and girls. Hmm, the future looked very appealing indeed.
The real world was a little bit less so. I was one of those odd kids that got beat up a lot and called names a lot. But then something wonderful happened, I grew to be six foot four inches tall in the seventh grade. No more name calling, no more getting beat up, I even went so far as to beat up one bully myself. But I remained a bookworm and more than a bit of a nerd as I was nuts about Star Trek and Lost in Space. Of course, I was poor as well, so there was no way I was ever going to be one of the in crowd anyway.
I read a lot of books, mostly sci-fi, but a lot of other stuff as well. I have never been one of those that picks one genre and forgets the rest. I did go through a Thornbirds phase were I read a lot of rather sappy novels set in Australia. (shudder)
Two of my favorite TV characters are Willow from Buffy and Data from Next Gen. They both have these skills I am envious of. Not being a witch, not really, magic creeps me out for the most part. Not being an immortal nerd either, though it seems to work pretty well for Data. No, the skill they both demonstrated from time to time, was the ability to suck up books like a sponge. Just a flick of thought and they would have the whole library zapped into their brains and ready for use. No more having to read five hundred pages to figure out how to put a boarder on a photo in Photoshop, just zap and viola, art!
Of course, there must be some kind of karmic law that says you need to slow down and read when you really want to learn something. Oh you can cram for a test easy enough, but try and remember any of that junk a week later. Of course, who would want to remember any of that junk a week later?
I was at the library a bit ago, and I was thinking how cool it would be to just assimilate all this knowledge. Not sure what I would do with it, but wouldn’t it be cool? Of course, that is what Google and libraries are for, so you don’t have to haul all this crap around all the time. But think how good you’d be on Millionaire of Jeopardy.
As a writer, of course, you want to read with an eye for what is written, not just what is said. This is stuff that has been published, someone paid to have this book made. So maybe it isn’t the greatest book ever written, but there it is. How many books have you had published? You can always learn a bit more. Can’t you?
