I was chatting with two students during the bake sale this afternoon, and I mentioned that I want to buy a book. After I told them that I already have 3,000 books in my collection, they wondered why I would possibly want to buy another one. Non-readers just don’t understand.☺

I get more pleasure from books than from almost anything else. Reading books, reading about books, writing books, writing about books, browsing at bookstores, sorting books, whatever. I’ve been a book-lover since elementary school, and I think it is fair to state that I have learned a lot more from books than from any classrooms I have sat in (mostly because I have never had the privilege of having myself as a teacher, haha).

In all those years, are there any books which have a special place in my heart? Definitely, although the reasons vary from something about the book which has a special resonance to me to those which recall a particular time and place in my life. Here are some of the books and fiction magazines which occur to me immediately. You can do a lot worse than spending a few hours in the company of one of these:

Tom Swift Jr books, by Victor Appleton II
Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Brittle Innings, by Michael Bishop
The Discoverers, by Daniel Boorstin
any Darkover book, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Wild Swans, by Jung Chang
Nova, by Samuel R. Delany
Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow
A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt
The Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Green Lantern Comics #76-88, by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams
An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears
The Wild Shore, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Nightwings, by Robert Silverberg
Here Gather the Stars (Way Station), by Clifford D. Simak
Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
Red Sorghum, by Mo Yan
Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny