The Best Books I Have Ever Read

Last week I told my readers how I have moved into the twenty first century by my use of an I-Pod, filled with great music and plugged into my ears so that I can make better time when I walk. I admit that it is a great invention, and I am progressing so that I have reached four miles per day in my exercising.

Now my children tell me of another electronic device, handheld and compact, that allows one to read books on a small screen anywhere and at any time.

And there I draw the line.

Books must have covers, and pages, and print on each page, front and back. The pages must be made of paper, and be numbered sequentially, and have a title and chapters and good words that, when strung together in sentences, make profound sense.

Authors must not be too prolific. They should be required to sweat a lot in the production of the book. Shelby Foote signed a contract to write a Civil War history. He planned one volume, and he figured a year to do it in. He even accepted an advance based on this. Fifteen years and three volumes later he completed his great history and I proudly possess it in my library.

You can hardly turn on a talk show without a guest announcing breathlessly that he or she has just completed a know-all book on politics or diet or sex or training cats (that last is definitely in the fiction category) and it is predicted to be a best seller and it was written in just three months, and you really should run right out and stand in line and buy a copy. This, of course, follows closely on the heels of the one that the “author” published last month. If you succumb to this sales pitch, be prepared to use the book for a door stop. That will be its best use.

I must admit that I have been writing a book myself. I finished the last chapter six months ago, and it is about the War Between the States (the “Waw”, as we call it). I used part of it in my column about Marianna Day, and it was praised. My problem is that I wrote the last chapter first, and I now have what is known as “writers’ block” and nothing will send me back to do the first chapters.

I have been reading for most of my life. I learned when I was four years old and my mother would read the “comics” to me. She hated doing it. Finally she gave me an ultimatum: “read by Christmas or do without the comic pages”. After she explained it to me that way, it came easily. This was fortunate. A couple of years later I contracted polio, or “infantile paralysis”, as it was known in those days. I was quarantined and, when the pain left and the inability to move continued for a while, I read. I read newspapers and books. I recall reading one of my mother’s books named “Anthony Adverse”. It was about as long as “War and Peace” and I suspect that it was a romance novel, maybe even a “bodice ripper”, but at the age of six how was I to recognize that?

I soon graduated to sea stories and adventures. I sailed the oceans with Count Von Luckner, the “Sea Devil”, and experienced “Mutiny on the Bounty” with Captain Bligh of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I found the writings of Joseph Conrad, and went to Africa in his “Heart of Darkness” and rode out a “Typhoon” with that master of the English language.

Strange folks have written books, and one of the most unusual authors was a lady named Gypsy Rose Lee. That was her stage name, and some of my older readers will recognize her, but not if their wives are around. She was a “stripper” on stage and very classy. H. L. Mencken, a writer for the Baltimore Sun Herald, coined a word to describe her: “ecdaisist”. He took the Greek word for “shedding” and stretched it out to take in the stripping to music that Gypsy Rose did, She not only was good, but she wrote an autobiography that was made into the musical “Gypsy”. On occasion you may be on an elevator and hear the song “Has Any Body Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”. It was written for the show by Jule Stine. A movie followed and she wrote more books and acted in several flicks.

Before you ask, no, I never saw Gypsy perform. I did see Janeen the Tassel Dancer at a night club in one of the west coast ports. Janeen had several tassels strategically placed, and she could twirl them and stop them in mid air and cause them to reverse course. She was well endowed on the upper decks, which is a nautical term. I suspect that she never had to have a face lift. She would only have to take her bra off and the weight would take care of the wrinkles.

And there was Blaze Starr, made famous for being the girlfriend of one of the Longs of Louisiana and also famous for……..

Wait, how did I get off the subject of books?

Last year a young man from Tallahassee who on occasion was published in a newspaper there wrote a column on great books. I E-mailed him, and posed this question: “if you were leaving home and could only take four books with you and would not know where you would be for the next two years, which ones would you select?”. I asked that question of him because I had faced it once. When I enlisted in the Navy, all of my possessions had to fit in a sea bag, and I had room for three or four books and had to make a choice. My mother had given me a Bible, so that went in, but did not get read often. I chose ones that I could read and re-read, and they served me well through my time at sea.

I hope that I will never have to do without books, books that you can pick up and feel, not “texted” books. Theresa and I had over four hundred books about the War Between the States, some fiction, most actual happenings. Stories of battles that were factual in that war surpassed any that have been tried in the fictional sense.

Theresa and I still communicate through these volumes. A couple of months ago I was doing research on my book. During her last years she had also prepared to write a book. I casually picked up a first person account, opened it and found tucked between some pages a Florida Lottery ticket. I never bought lottery tickets, but she often did. She felt that she was doing her part to help education. Well, that’s what she gave as her reason for traveling down once a week to the local convenience store and putting her dollar on the counter. So I know that this is a ticket that she had purchased. It is dated July 8, 1989, and obviously did not win, so it became her bookmark.

And, suddenly one day I pick up the same book, a rather obscure one, and find Theresa’s ticket. This could be nothing except her guiding me from the Beyond and saying: “Holmes, play these numbers”. So I will, soon. I will play them at the appropriate time and I will win. The amount will be in the millions of dollars. I will take a lump sum settlement which, with the standard tax deduction, will still be, say, about nine million dollars, give or take some. I will spend it properly on wine, women and song. And perhaps buy a book.

Theresa would want it that way.