Take Me Away

I was reading a column Stephen King writes -- this week was about summer books, and he gives these disturbing statistics:

One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college grads never read another book after college.

Growing up, my parents both read -- my mother loved the old Perry Mason books by Erle Stanley Gardner. I loved just reading the titles... they were all The Case of like The Case of the Careless Kitten, odd names like that. I never read them. It seems as if there were dozens of them.

As a child, my reading was mostly comic books and Landmark books (those were the young adult history books). We would go to the library at school once a week, and you could take out one book.

The first grown-up book I read was in 5th or 6th grade. It was about Lizzie Borden who took the axe and you know the rest. Small type, no pictures, and I was hooked.

I remember when my brother was young (are you reading this, Sam?) and he would only read sports books, Guiness book of World Records, type books... and I knew that he would someday outgrow that and he did. I think he was about 12 when he discovered Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Then he went on a reading blitz and kept reading that same book over and over... I think he read it seven times in a row. Finally I said, "Don't you want to read something different?" and he said, "Do you only look once at the Mona Lisa?" I remember being stunned since that was a pretty sophisticated answer for a child... and it shut me up too.

A few years back, The Old Man and the Sea was celebrating its 50th anniversary and I sent Sam a copy of the book which he read -- now for the eight time... and he told me that when he first read it, he identified with the boy, and now he identifies with the Old Man.

That's the sheer pleasure of reading that these folks are missing. Is there anything better than being transported by a book -- either to Perry Mason's courtroom or to a tiny fishing boat?