This was a recent Internet discovery that reminded me on my passion for books, something that I always found so mysterious. Why is it that some people are simply born with passion for books, while other's won't even touch them once they are not forced anymore in the schools? I am almost sure it has to do with nurture or the simple fact was the love for reading encouraged in one's childhood. Than again, how about all those kids who grew up into readers without being encouraged to do so? Mystery of mysteries!
From my personal perspective, I think it was encouraged with my mother reading me all those children's books and buying me little books with gramophone records (from Disney stories) that functioned as simple audio books and usually added songs from the movies. Once I memorized all those read-along stories and songs about Aristocats, Bambi and Dumbo, it wasn't long before I dived into comics completely by myself and at the age of four nobody had to read me the adventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or Popeye. Come start of the school, while other kids were learning how to spell, I was already far ahead and reading books. One of the main, life-changing experiences for me was when the sweet old neighbor lady (a retired teacher who recognized what kind of person little me was) gave me some cash to enter a public library (something that nobody in my family didn't think about) and I started to visit local library sometimes twice a week. Its also interesting to note that nobody in my close family thought about encouraging me to read and they just took it for granted - obviously its not just a nurture but one has to have natural predisposition for it, just like for sport or anything else.
Maybe its an escapism, surely it is. As a kid I soaked in everything I could put my hands on, though must admit I have also read a lot of crap trough the years, which was necessary in order to hone my own personal taste. All those best-sellers in public libraries (Sydney Shelton, Harold Robbins) don't appeal to me at all anymore but hey, what did I know back than? Erich von Däniken thrilled me once, now I find him repetitive and slightly silly when compared to later similar writers. I clearly remember being tortured with the literature schools forced on us and I still believe this is the reason why lots of kids never experienced the thrill of reading - had they been offered something appropriate, like Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Zane Grey, Karl May or Mark Twain they might have caught the bug, unfortunately most of us were bored to death with analyzing dour, sour and depressive stories written by artists acclaimed by academic circles (therefore not the popular ones) + there must be something abut teachers plowing uninspired trough daily routine. So I read what I had to for the school and than enjoyed Agatha Christie in my spare time. The first (and only) time when these two came together was when I encountered obligatory school task of reading Nobel winner Ivo Andrić whose "The Bridge on the Drina" turned out to be magnificent piece of art, but at that point I was already sophisticated enough to search for something different than just usual crime/thriller fluff.
For the longest time, public libraries were my temples, as I never really had enough money or space to collect books by myself as a teenager. This is something my parents frowned upon (same as collecting music records) calling my hobby pointless, which reflects the atmosphere where I grew up. Later in life I made up my mind that this is something that makes me happy, its my own money and it doesn't hurt anybody. So when I think about the biggest loves/passions of my life its books, music and movies, in that order. When eventually I spread my wings across the borders of my geographical accident of birth and found wonderful bookshops around the world, I was a bit taken aback first - there were just so many different genres and subjects to explore, much more than my own Croatian public libraries could ever dream of. Out of curiosity I had dived head-on into celebrity biographies first, because this was something I never had before but eventually I found that non-fiction is my true pleasure, all about history, science and less known facts about our world. On the other hand, I am also aware of the classics so every now and than I remind myself that I have to read occasional classic, though often I do find them moth-eaten and than run back to something that appeals to me. I have quite voluminous book collection + tons of e-books at this point, probably much more than I can ever finish in this lifetime & lot of books still unread around me. At the moment I am struggling a little bit with "Famous Last Words" by otherwise brilliant Canadian writer Timothy Findley whose "Pilgrim" and "Not Wanted on the Voyage" I really loved before, but this one just fails to catch my interest and I am very close to just leave it. Books, like everything else, have their own moment and maybe I just need to wait for the right time.
This Internet article is something that inspired my own essay here and its all about magical places around London, those Antiquarian shops where book lovers feel so thrilled - I never cared much for distinction between second-hand and new books, for me its all the same (in fact, I might even prefer second-hand books). One of the greatest pleasures of my world traveling is that I am familiar with the cities and know where to find a bookshops everywhere I go. On the other hand, it saddens me a lot that I don't really know many other book lovers because on daily basis I deal with people who refuse to read, complain they can't focus and simply have no habit of reading. Which I find so interesting - why is it so that books have no appeal to some, while others absolutely love them? One of my ship roommates told me he had never read a book in his life - he was a gym person who loved his biceps, triceps and healthy shakes, could and would not read anything even if you point a gun at him.
From the top of my head, here is a list of some all-time favorites:
The Soul's Code (James Hillman)
Derviš i smrt (Meša Selimović)
Embers (Sándor Márai)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
The Once and Future King (T.H.White)
A World Lit Only by Fire (William Manchester)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Good Soldier Švejk (Jaroslav Hašek)
Alias Grace (Margaret Attwood)
My life (Isadora Duncan)
The Story of Mankind (Hendrik Willem Van Loon)
Memoirs of Hadrian (Marguerite Yourcenar)
The Five people you meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom)
Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell (Susana Clarke)
1491 (Charles C.Mann)
Blues people (LeRoi Jones)
The World without End (Ken Follett)
The Shadows of the wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafron)
The Daughter of time (Josephine Tey)
Bolja prošlost (Petar Luković)
Supernatural (Graham Hancock)
Civilisation (Kenneth Clark)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)
A short history of nearly everything (Bill Bryson)
Narcissus and Goldmund (Herman Hesse)
The Aleph and other stories (Jorge Luis Borges)
Island at the centre of the world (Russel Shorto)
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