R is for Read

Propaganda? Bull!

I have been a reader ever since I can remember. I still own early childhood books, battered as they are, of nursery rhymes, fables, and stories of curious little monkeys. The stuff I latched onto earliest, which I still recall, were Freddy the Pig books. Freddy was a take-charge yet good-natured swine, coralling fellow barnyard animals to join him whenever an adventure arose. He was introduced as "the smallest and cleverest of the pigs on the Bean farm". Throughout the series of twenty-six books, Freddy went  on to become a politician, a detective, a magician, a pilot, and a newspaper editor, among other things. Sort of an Indiana Jones character, only more of a Renaissance man.... er, pig. 

One standalone book I absolutely loved, and checked out of the local library over and over, was The Story of Ferdinand. This told the tale of a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight in bullfights. Silly and hilarious, Ferdinand, released in 1936 just before the Spanish Civil War, was actually banned in several countries where they believed the children's book was a pacifist document! But India's Mahatma Ghandi cited Ferdinand as his favourite book. Good for him.

Oh, and there was that impish little "monkey", Curious George, who wasn't even a monkey really - for chimpanzees are apes! No tail.... that's how you tell. Anyway, I owned Curious George Rides a Bike, my one and only George book, though I did check out several of his other adventures from the library, where everybody knew my name.... I was such a regular there. That Rides a Bike book was my favourite, though: George quickly learns to ride a bicycle, then helps deliver newspapers... until he decides to make paper boats out of them and float them down a stream. Then he busts the bike and.... well, I won't give it all away. Let's just say things get wackier and wackier as the story progresses. Young or old, try it out - fun never goes out of style.

A bit of a jump in years and then I was reading Encyclopia Brown, Boy Detective. As a younger lad, I first became enamored with detectives via Freddy the Pig, who dressed a bit like Sherlock Holmes with a plaid deerstalker hat and a big magnifying glass. When a slightly more sophisticated private eye, in the form of a 12-year-old boy, came along, I was primed for more crime detection. It was around this time - when I was getting close to age 12, too - that I also discovered the world of Sherlock Holmes. I dove into all of those Conan Doyle stories with zest and still own every Holmes story. But I am getting off track here. I collected a few more Encyclopedia Brown books, but tore through many more from the library. 

All that detective stuff really got my juices flowing, so I got myself a kid's detective kit, which included an ink pad for taking fingerprints, some talcum powder and brush for dusting for prints, clear adhesive strips for lifting the prints, and a magnifying glass for studying those prints. And a few other little gadgets that I can't remember. I upgraded to a "grown-up" magnifier and then I was really ready to roll. Sadly, there was no crime in the neighbourhood, so I didn't get much business. 

At the school library, I discovered fantastic literature like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I went bananas for those stories, and hunted down more books about similar topics, like "real life" werewolf, vampire, and ghost folklore. All that European mythology, and Gothic and Victorian stuff really sparked my imagination.

It wasn't until a garage sale in the town where my grandparents lived - while I visited one summer as a kid - that I found a science-fiction book that would kick me off on a lifetime appreciation of that genre. That book was Have Spacesuit - Will Travel, by Robert A. Heinlein. I read and re-read that story many times, enjoying its fun and light-SF tone. Though that book went missing somewhere during my life, I did buy a replacement copy... same edition with the same cover art... just for old time's sake. Wonderful stuff. It wasn't long until I read and loved Starship Troopers (not to be confused with the very different sort of movie of the same name) and other, more weighty Heinlein works. 

By my mid-teens, I was hooked into the J.R.R. Tolkien world of fantasy. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings kept me up late at night and even early on school mornings before classes began. I'm not sure if I'll ever tackle those hefty Rings volumes again, though, especially now that I can just pop on the movie versions in a fraction of the time (though still lengthy enough). 

Then I was charging full-tilt into genre fiction for several years, gobbling up horror, SF, and fantasy novels like they were going out of style. Heinlein, Piers Anthony, and Ray Bradbury were among my favourites then. Though I don't read as much in the fantastical fiction genre nowadays, I can still enjoy a Bradbury story occasionally. You know quality when it holds up so well over the decades. Timeless.

I've very fond memories of finding

this - my very first sci-fi book