Tedtalks: Read a Book!
As a recovering English major, I have an actual license to spend time with books — one of the tangible benefits of an English degree.
My reading gene kicked in a lot earlier, of course. My parents were college-educated eggheads — Wellesley and Yale, no less — and they strewed books all over the place. A baby couldn’t crawl across the living room without tripping over some book or another.
This is National Reading Month, and this Senior News is a love letter to reading and books. The very best part of my day is often spent with a book — no social media, no computer, no chores. Just plop down on the couch between the fireplace and Stella the snoring dog and open a book. Author George R. R. Martin once said, “Sleep is good … and books are better.” On a good day, I can do both.
Word people wax poetic about books and reading. For author Annie Dillard, reading is a life force: “She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.” Once filled, Betty Smith wrote, “The world was hers for the reading.”
One hundred years before Christ, Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Much later, astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
Here in Humboldt, the reading habit is strong, and we are fortunate to have many independent bookstores to feed our habit — including Blake’s Books, Booklegger, Eureka Books, Tin Can Mailman and the incinerated but rising again Northtown Books. “Of course we’ll be back,” says Northtown Books owner Dante DiGenova (see page 4).
Jen McFadden, owner of Booklegger in Old Town, says she loves helping readers find the right book: “That is an honor we take seriously” (page 1).
So let’s get reading. As Frank Zappa said, “So many books, so little time.”
••• IN OTHER NEWS …
Alert Senior News readers may note a hole on page 8, home to Margaret Kellermann’s column for 10 years. We’re sorry to see her go and wish her all the best in her Next Big Thing.
Our columnists write about 420 beautifully sculpted words of wit and wisdom every month on topics that interest them, which may also have to do with the aging process we’re all experiencing. If you’re interested in doing that, please send three sample columns as Word documents, along with a little background on yourself and what vision you would have for your column, to tpease@humsenior.org by March 15. We’re especially interested in hearing from the Eel River Valley and points south.
••• ONE LAST THING: I’ve just finished my 10th year as editor of Senior News. Thank you all for sharing your stories. I’m still having fun, which is a great thing at any age.
Ted Pease is a writer, reader and lucky editor of Senior News.
