My first serious book was Man Eaters of the Kumaon, by James Corbett. It was about an English hunter who became famous while traveling to remote places in India to dispatch man eating leopards and tigers who were terrorizing local villages by killing their inhabitants. Man Eaters of the Kumaon briefly quenched my thirst for adventure. Then I discovered Zane Grey, Louis L"Amour, and my idea of the best Western writer ever to pound a keyboard: Jack Schaefer (Shane, The Kean Land).
History has always fascinated me, and I got into World War II in a big way with Winston Churchill's six book series on the events leading to and through the war. There was John Toland's masterpiece, But Not In Shame, about America's series of devastating defeats during the six months following Pearl Harbor. I read Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny, Winds of War, and War and Remembrance. And how can any World War II list be complete without The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?
A move to "historical fiction" seemed natural, so I discovered C.S. Forester and his series of novels featuring "Horatio Hornblower" and set during the Napoleonic wars. James Clavell came along, particularly with Shogun, Taipan, and King Rat. Tom Clancy's Hunt For the Red October and Red Storm Rising fell in there somewhere.
I haven't neglected my nonfictions either, particularly those related to outdoor/nature, such as Also Leopold's Sand County Almanac or a couple of Doug Chadwick's, Barbara Kingsolver's, and Annie Dillard's.
It's entirely possible my tastes run to the eclectic, too, since I shed real tears while engaged with Tuesdays With Morrie and 84 Charing Crossroads. I thoroughly enjoyed All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten and The Education of Little Tree.
Few books have had as much impact on me as Wallace Stegner's beautifully written Angle of Repose. The Meadow by James Galvin is another winner. Lately I've discovered Patrick O'Brian and his "Aubrey/Maturin" series, also seafaring novels set during the Napoleonic times.
I've read books by Eisenhower, and about Nixon, Truman, Reagan, and both Roosevelts. I'm drawn, too, to Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and Hamilton. I believe Killer Angels by Michael Schaara to be the very best historical novel (Civil War, Gettysburg) ever crafted. I've read everything Robert Ruark wrote, some Hemingway, some Steinbeck, some Forsyth and several Micheners (The Covenant ranks high on my top reading list), and Patrick McManus has left me rolling on the floor with his several books.
If all the foregoing seems a little daunting, bear in mind that I'm at my "three score, ten" and have always preferred a good book to anything offered on television no matter how uplifting it's purported to be. As a matter of fact, even counting the multiple books not listed, but read, I've only told you of somewhere in the neighborhood of 135 books (though there've been many, many more, most of which are forgettable) Since I'm something over 840 months old, one could assume I've made it a practice to read, say, two books per year.
That's untrue, of course; a more honest figure would be more like two books per week. Then, too, one must consider the magazines read, and the newspapers, newsletters, and research material. My wife, Jane, even claims she's seen me sit down with an encyclopedia to browse for no apparent reason.
Believe what you will, discard what you won't. But one thing that cannot be denied is somewhere along the line I developed a love for reading.
And thank God I did! It's been my ticket to a better life.
