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Feast of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Day two of the continuing meme.
No jury duty today; instead I'm writing and looking for work and running errands.
Day 1 Introduce yourself
Day 02 - Your first love, in great detail
Although the question presumes romance, I was always taught that a gentleman does not discuss these matters.
Besides, my earliest attempts in this area, while perhaps entertaining in a train-wreck sort of way, have faded in my memory to that hazy nostalgia that is only on the vaguest of speaking terms with the facts.
So instead, I'll talk briefly about my oldest, deepest, and most enduring love: books.
My family emigrated from Germany to the United States when I was three months shy of my fourth birthday. I spoke no English. Thanks to the magic of Sesame Street and my dear Mister Rogers, I was reading and writing English by the time I was five.
From my earliest days, I devoured books. When I read fiction, I can read extremely quickly. I remember particularly one summer morning coming back from the library with Watership Down. I opened the book as I started up the stairs to my room. Halfway up, I sat down on one of the wooden steps and read the book cover to cover, finishing just as I was being called down for dinner.
I hadn't moved from that step the entire time. I was probably about 12 years old.
I quickly tired of the readers we had in my grammar school. I was caught reading The Hobbit in my second grade (age 8?) reading class instead of doing the assignment. The teacher did not believe I was actually reading the book, and she quizzed me on the spot about the plot. She pointed out several words in the text and asked me what they meant.
The next week, I was assigned the 8th grade reading book. Unfortunately, I then spent most of the remainder of my grammar school career reading the same books year after year. Needless to say, at some point I lost interest. I don't think I actually passed a Reading or English course after that until High School. I just didn't see the point in doing assignments I'd already done the year previous. Or five years previous.
During my recesses, I read every book in my grade school library. I still have the thesaurus the Librarian gifted me upon my graduation in 1980.
My first job was volunteering at the Chicago Public Library.
After college I worked in book stores for ten years before I realized I would never make a proper living at it. I would happily own and operate a book store if I had some other source of income.
As the old joke goes - How do you make a million in the book trade? Start with two million.
Beyond simply reading, I love the romance of the book and the very physical objects themselves. One of my most treasured possessions is a calfskin-covered incunabula of Cæsar's Commentaries. The dedication is to Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg (Principi Friderico Wilhelmo, Marchioni Bradndenburgico).
I love the smell of book dust - I have been known to be able to sniff out old books hidden from view. I once discovered a box of old missals and hymnals that had been lost behind a pipe organ in a choir loft for approximately fifty years.
As I sit in my office writing this, I am surrounded by books. Some are old friends, traveling with me since I was a child, and some are only weeks old. A precarious pile sits next to my armchair in the corner, waiting to be read. I have signed first editions, and paperback pulp, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lewis Carroll, Lord Norwich and H.P. Lovecraft, G.K. Chesterton and Italo Calvino, Borgés and Benedict.
Books were my first great love, and I love them still.
( The rest of the days )
Day two of the continuing meme.
No jury duty today; instead I'm writing and looking for work and running errands.
Day 1 Introduce yourself
Day 02 - Your first love, in great detail
Although the question presumes romance, I was always taught that a gentleman does not discuss these matters.
Besides, my earliest attempts in this area, while perhaps entertaining in a train-wreck sort of way, have faded in my memory to that hazy nostalgia that is only on the vaguest of speaking terms with the facts.
So instead, I'll talk briefly about my oldest, deepest, and most enduring love: books.
My family emigrated from Germany to the United States when I was three months shy of my fourth birthday. I spoke no English. Thanks to the magic of Sesame Street and my dear Mister Rogers, I was reading and writing English by the time I was five.
From my earliest days, I devoured books. When I read fiction, I can read extremely quickly. I remember particularly one summer morning coming back from the library with Watership Down. I opened the book as I started up the stairs to my room. Halfway up, I sat down on one of the wooden steps and read the book cover to cover, finishing just as I was being called down for dinner.
I hadn't moved from that step the entire time. I was probably about 12 years old.
I quickly tired of the readers we had in my grammar school. I was caught reading The Hobbit in my second grade (age 8?) reading class instead of doing the assignment. The teacher did not believe I was actually reading the book, and she quizzed me on the spot about the plot. She pointed out several words in the text and asked me what they meant.
The next week, I was assigned the 8th grade reading book. Unfortunately, I then spent most of the remainder of my grammar school career reading the same books year after year. Needless to say, at some point I lost interest. I don't think I actually passed a Reading or English course after that until High School. I just didn't see the point in doing assignments I'd already done the year previous. Or five years previous.
During my recesses, I read every book in my grade school library. I still have the thesaurus the Librarian gifted me upon my graduation in 1980.
My first job was volunteering at the Chicago Public Library.
After college I worked in book stores for ten years before I realized I would never make a proper living at it. I would happily own and operate a book store if I had some other source of income.
As the old joke goes - How do you make a million in the book trade? Start with two million.
Beyond simply reading, I love the romance of the book and the very physical objects themselves. One of my most treasured possessions is a calfskin-covered incunabula of Cæsar's Commentaries. The dedication is to Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg (Principi Friderico Wilhelmo, Marchioni Bradndenburgico).
I love the smell of book dust - I have been known to be able to sniff out old books hidden from view. I once discovered a box of old missals and hymnals that had been lost behind a pipe organ in a choir loft for approximately fifty years.
As I sit in my office writing this, I am surrounded by books. Some are old friends, traveling with me since I was a child, and some are only weeks old. A precarious pile sits next to my armchair in the corner, waiting to be read. I have signed first editions, and paperback pulp, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lewis Carroll, Lord Norwich and H.P. Lovecraft, G.K. Chesterton and Italo Calvino, Borgés and Benedict.
Books were my first great love, and I love them still.
( The rest of the days )
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