The Boy Who Read: Part Three

The Boy Who Read Part Three… I promise this is the last one…maybe.

In Parts One and Two I went on at length about my dislike of reading as a child and my newfound addiction in the form of the Harry Potter novels. While I might have made it clear as to why I decided to read the sixth and seventh novels before seeing Half Blood Prince on film. I never really revisited the entire series as subject of debate. I will say that I have spanked that 24 year old that treated the novels and the overall series as childish and unnerving. If anything, J.K. Rowling has relit the pilot light of inspiration in me to continue writing and perhaps make a more concerted effort to finish a piece of work. Of course, commitment to a diet holds about as much weight. With this I offer five things I love about the Harry Potter series and two things I dislike. I won’t go so far as say hate because I went into the books knowing how it ended so a lot of guesswork was taken out of one of the ‘dislikes.’

1. My first ‘love’ associated with the books comes from a background of loving language. I never met a pun or rhyme I didn’t like. Rowling has a firm grasp of etymology and linguistics which really delighted me in her usage throughout the series. The names of characters, locations, and objects such spells have this very soothing shape to them. Whether this can be attributed to her being English or just a lover of good study is beyond me. Looking at Tolkien or Lewis as standards in British Popular Literature, Rowling has earned her spot alongside some of the better writers in her use of language. I always looked at George Lucas’ use of language to create names for characters in the Star Wars universe as my own personal standard of yumminess, being primarily a fan of film and visual media, but Rowling now takes that mantle.
   
2. My second ‘love’ of the books is the way in which she treats the reader. While the books are written in the third person perspective primarily associated with what is happening to Harry, it kind of invites the reader into the story as a first person narrative. I attribute this to an understanding her audience, a kid who can identify with the main characters and the adults who live vicariously through their children or their own childhood. I also believe this to be attributed to her style of writing, specifically her descriptiveness of the action and environment. It is very to imagine the locations and looks of the characters through her descriptions. My biggest hang up with reading is my imagination, which oddly enough is probably more refined than any other trait I possess. I can think of something ten times more horrible under my bed than what could actually be there when I was a kid. Jaws and The Blair Witch Project are favorites because of this acuity of my mind’s eye. Another great thing about how Rowling treats the audience is that she is great at tying things together without letting the reader feel like they’ve tread upon old ground. There are paragraphs and passages in the last books that reference action that took place in the first or second book and it felt like new information when I read it.
   
3. Love number three is the story which is accessible to everyone. Remember, I was a skeptic. I admit, when the books first came out, I was totally against the idea of this school for wizards and witches setting. My gold standard for fantasy or science fiction has been either been based on Star Wars or JRR Tolkien. The idea of trying to fit a story about school and childhood into a medieval style or modern British world made me want to hear nails on chalkboards nonstop as an alternative. The fact that adults were gobbling up the books as much, if not more than, kids was disconcerting to me. Then, as time went by I started to soften a little. I had to admit from a cultural standpoint that this was a positive thing for kids. We were at a point where there was a definite shift from books to more visual media had occurred and then along comes these books that gets kids reading again. Not to mention, families are spending time together reading and discussing the books. It was a small check in the win column for family values. Of course, then the fundamentalist groups get in the way and start shouting “Satanic” and “Occult” and it sours the experience.
   
   As I let the fad, which by now had become a pop culture juggernaut, start to play out and plateau, I picked up the first book and was immediately sucked into it. A friend recently quoted C.S. Lewis to me regarding my change of heart. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” I never realized that I had already boiled down that beautiful quote years ago into, “I may get older, but I’ll never grow up.” I forgot that somewhere along the way. Once I allowed myself to accept the story for what it was, I was able to enjoy it. As the books progressed, the story matured as did the writer, I believe.
   
4. My fourth love of the series is its hero structure and quest motifs. The story plays on the levels of the hero’s quest without relying on the standard convention of allegory on the surface. Yes, there are definite overtones of love vs. hate, family vs. solidarity, and good vs. evil, but it’s the subtext that really drives the action. By all accounts Harry Potter should not have lived until the age of two. Every step of the way he has someone there to help him. His mother’s love shields him and saves him as a baby. Dumbledore provides him with the tools to solve a lot of his problems. His friends sacrifice themselves time and time again for him to succeed.
   
   In all seriousness, Harry Potter hardly takes a stand and fights back until the end of book two and that was after he was given help in the form of the Sorting Hat from which he pulled Gryffindor’s sword. From then on he still has other people doing things to advance his march towards victory until well into the last two books. But what is really going on here, besides the Christ like referencing is that Harry isn’t alone in his quest even though he is pretty much an orphan. Yes, the Dursley’s provide basic food and shelter but he is emotionally on his own for a decade. It’s not only the prophecy, but the willingness by nearly everyone to believe in him that gives him the strength to be victorious. There comes a point in Deathly Hallows when it finally clicks for Harry. Until this point, he’s never asked to be a hero. He’s a mediocre student but he has the potential to be much more, a leader. A great leader is someone who does the job without asking for it. The first hints to this are in Order of the Phoenix when he forms Dumbledore’s Army. But the realization to Harry’s need to be a leader happens when he buries Dobby.
   

   
   Get Not a Horcrux on various items
   From Mongo Angry! Mongo Smash! the store.

   You can say that it happens when Dumbledore entrusts Harry with the task of finding and destroying Horcruxes, but Harry still hasn’t taken on the position of leader. He knows what needs to be done, but he doesn’t understand how to do it. He’s just following orders. You could also point out that when Harry continues to force Dumbledore to drink the potion in the cave to retrieve the locket has taken on the role of leader, but at that point he is still following orders as well. But after he buries Dobby he sees the power of sacrifice in the name of the cause. So much so that he himself has to do it as well in order to save himself and everyone around him. As he stands in the great hall overlooking the dead and wounded, he sees his friends lying there. In his mind, he struggles with the thought that they are there because of him and he accepts his fate and is prepared to die. It’s a leap of faith and he takes it. Yet, he still does not face death alone. He surrounds himself with fallen loved ones and accepts that he needs help from others, especially adults.
   
   The greatest lesson to be taught isn’t just the nature of love and good conquers hate and evil. It’s all about the journey. Voldemort is so obsessed with making things happen in order to become the most powerful, the he neglects to see the fine print. He rushes off into battle without first looking at the playing field. That’s why he loses. Harry only acts once he has enough information to secure his upper hand. This is another milestone for the boy who was willing to go off after Sirius when he thought him a killer and Voldemort when he returned. Over the course of the series, Harry follows in his father’s footsteps of arrogance and entitlement but learns to curb his temper and allow things to take their course. Thus, knowledge and defense become Harry’s greatest weapons over Voldemort. Yes, he was recognized as the master of the Elder Wand but if Voldemort had known that, he would have chose to dispose of Potter in some other fashion. Harry lets Voldemort destroy himself.
   
5. Love Number Five is Rowling’s decision to not play it safe. In children’s literature, much like the upbringing of children these days there has been an inherent decision to not let kids fail. This is my biggest pet peeve against our society as it stands today. My kid falls down a lot and I tell her to get back up. Now, if she’s really hurt, I go get her, but she fails at the age of two. She doesn’t like it but she is starting to understand it. For a story aimed at kids, there is a reluctance to take a chance and push the boundaries in regards to the safety of your characters. Happy endings come with little sacrifice in some stories. But Rowling isn’t afraid to kill her characters, regardless of their popularity or overall goodness. Apart from the killing of Harry’s parents, no other major character shockingly dies until Cedric Diggory in the fourth book. I don’t count the other deaths in between because they are either peripheral or not as intricately tied to an emotional attachment. Having Wormtail kill Cedric, a teenager proves that this is no longer just a children’s story. People die in violent and tragic ways and by the time we reach book seven, the gloves are off in terms of who is safe and who is cursed.

Now, unfortunately, my two dislikes.

1. Number one is Rowling’s use of Deus ex Machina. In the first book, Harry survives the Quirrell’s assault because he was protected by his Mother’s love. Albeit a stylized salvation, to simply end a climax by saying he was burned by love is pretty much phoning it in by my thoughts. In book two, Harry is first saved by Fawkes the phoenix when he blinds the basilisk and delivers the sorting hat which produces Gryffindor’s sword. Then he saves a dying Harry by producing tears that have healing abilities. Here Rowling has built into the early part of the story the significance of Fawkes and his abilities but even so, it still stands to serve as a “Just in time” salvation. As the books progress, the usage lessens or at least is subtle in its application which could account for the maturing tone of the novels over time.
   
2. My other dislike is Rowling’s attention to detail. To say that she is overly descriptive sounds wrong. Her world is fully realized and her intention in moving the story from point A to point B is sound. However, over time you begin to build up an attachment with certain characters who either become important in terms of development of story or just because they accentuate the action in the right spot.
   
   Case in point, Lupin and Tonks. Remus was a childhood friend of James and Sirius. He is an important part of Harry’s life in the third book but he stays out of Goblet of Fire. He comes back as part of books five and six but then only pops in and out of the story at certain moments in book seven to either deliver news or be sent away as a coward by Harry. He is regarded as a master duelist, yet he is hardly referenced at all in the Battle of Hogwarts except for whom he was fighting and that he died. The same goes for Tonks who has the same amount of action and is ultimately killed. Preference over character appearances aside, it’s the assumption of how both characters died that gets me. Both of them are seen sparsely during the battle and they are both killed off page. He get no real explanation other than the assumption that they were killed by their duelers. We get this passage about Fred dying and being placed in an alcove away from battle, but nothing about Lupin or Tonks. And what about Cho Chang and Lavendar Brown, did they survive? Accoding to the book, it's unclear, although Rowling states in an interview that Cho married a muggle. But what about Lavender? She was being attacked by Greyback and then Trewlaney smacked him in the head with a crystal ball. Did she survive? It seemed as if Rowling had too much going on and some to a footnote or explained afterwards. You see a lot of this over saturation of characters in television shows when cast members are continually added to an ensemble, creating a traffic jam of plotlines.
   
   Also, right after they escape the Ministry, there is a lot of story downtime during the search for Horcruxes in book seven. It especially drags after Ron leaves. Now, the one great thing about books over movies is the ability to take a story and shape and progress it without rushing towards the end. Look at Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. He builds and builds up action from the beginning to the end of book three. Then in book four, he stops it all to tell you another story from the past. It’s a kind of bait and switch tactic that works on paper but can drive someone mad if they’ve built up momentum in their reading. You hit that wall and your eyes nearly fly right off the page.
   
   Additionally, her ability to create a romantic development between characters seems to be a weak point. For the life of me I couldn’t resolve Harry’s affection for Ginny. It just seemed forced. Hermione and Ron’s affections are easy because they are rooted in conflict and that is a natural attraction but the payoff happens abruptly in the last chapters of book seven. I guess you can deduce that Ron’s compassion for the House Elves working in the kitchen is what spark the move for Hermione to eat his face off, but it didn’t read very well and it kind of broke my reading momentum. I hate having to go back and reread something once I've got a steady pace going.

For now, though, my head is not burning any longer. I have decided to take a small break in order to attend to other things that have been put on hold while I dive head first into the world of reading. I don’t think I will abandon it all together like I have in the past. I will probably make a more concerted effort to read something other than a magazine article. Just for a little while though, I need to enter a 12 step program and get myself clean. My wife is into book four of the Twilight series and even though she’s clipping along at a good pace, she seems perturbed at things that have happened in the fourth book. She has described in great detail the chemistry between these two characters and it really moves her. However, she is pissed. There is all this build up towards a payoff only to have the consummation of those desires be relegated to being alluded to and mentioned afterwards. It sounds as the author is great at setting the scene but can’t actually commit to writing about the icky stuff. I have my own thoughts on why, but I won’t get into a discussion about it here. I watched the movie and I feel as if I just watched a bad high school production of Into the Woods. My wife says the movie didn’t do the book justice. I think the producers and director went for marketing the film towards the OC and The Hills demographic and disregarded a lot of the text because they couldn’t keep the attention of the audience, otherwise.So, there you have it. I’m done. There is no more left to write. The Boy Who Read has grown up and is looking forward to the next good book. I’ve been given some suggestions and I will take them to heart. For now, the book is closed.

The Boy Who Read Part Two

Part Two

In part one I gave you a preface to my disdain of reading. Part Two specifically tackles a renewed interest thanks to a phenomenon in the popular fiction realm of literature.

In 1999, I worked as a Banquet Captain for a hotel. I worked with a variety of people ranging from high school seniors to senior citizens. It was at this time that I really took notice of the Harry Potter phenomenon. The book series was already a critical success and the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban had been released with much fanfare. By this time in my life, I had already felt the grumpiness of adulthood settling into my soul. I was living on my own after graduating college. I was in the infancy of a new relationship after suffering an emotional setback in another, the previous August. I was working a job that found me gravitating towards the AARP group of coworkers instead of TRL generation and I generally hated people, especially teens, at this point.

My usual shift saw me working the mornings to mid afternoon. I would usually get to leave and hour or so after the changing of shifts. At that time teeny boppers came flooding in with their bags and belongings cluttering up the department office which had become my imaginary base of operations. Usually, I would get there, set up the morning meetings, making coffee, putting out beverages, and then I would relax behind the big wooden desk for a half hour filling in the USA Today crossword puzzle and reading the Life section. When the afternoon crew had come in, they overtook my serenity along with the available desk space in the office. Between the two, a link was found, Harry Potter. In the mornings as I read the paper, stories, reviews, and graphs charting millions of money made by the books bombarded me as I sifted through the entertainment section of the paper. By the afternoon, the conversations among the kids were about the newest book and even a few copies littered the area.

Within here lies the problem. Was I grumpy because I felt some sort of social detachment from everyone else that shared in this pop cultural saturation or because I inherently felt that this kids book was just that, silly children’s literature? It’s not that I was some kind of literary snob, far from it. It’s just that I couldn’t understand how a fantasy novel about a school for witches and wizards could capture an entire world’s attention. I pushed the thoughts of even becoming slightly intrigued out of my head and went back to my, “Get off my lawn” attitude.

Moving along to 2001. I had changed jobs and was now working with adults my age or older. I was further into my relationship which had progressed towards my engagement in 2003. Also, the first Harry Potter novel, The Philosopher’s Stone just debuted as a movie, directed by Christopher Columbus. My girlfriend had a job that kept her busy on the weekends leaving me with some free time to go to the theater. Having absolutely nothing better to do, I decided to take in a matinee performance of The Sorcerer’s Stone, as it was now called, and had mixed feelings about it.

Ok, I admit, I allowed myself to get caught up in the magic and grandeur of this medieval looking modern day world of wizards and dragons and giants. The acting was pretty good and I was delighted if not surprised at the number of established and well regarded cast members, which for the most part are all British, mind you. What I found a little hard to swallow was the circumstances by which the characters resolve their problems. It’s a sort of convention by which in a novel or story, with children as protagonists, the adults play the fool or refuse to believe the impending danger that is set to besiege them. The kids, feeling abandoned or rebuffed, decide to take on the conflict themselves because only they can complete the task leaving the adults to either still not believe them or feel bewilderment as to how they could have beaten such a foe being only children. I found it a little contrived that all the time the answers would magically appear and only Harry and his friends were able to see the truth and tackle it. In the real world, these dangers would have been near fatal for kids their age, magical or not.

Still, I praised the film for its delivery, not knowing that it had taken some liberties with the arrangement of action in the book as well as some geography of Hogwarts landmarks. However, I wasn’t about to give the series my full attention and relied on letting the films serve as an acceptable version of the novels. While I allowed myself to see the first movie in the theater, I waited until they came to DVD or even cable to watch them.

By 2007 I was married, had a child, and had seen each of the Harry Potter films numerous times on television. ABC Family’s continual airing of all the films over weekends detracts from my getting anything else done around the house. Even worse was when I had HBO for a year and The Order of the Phoenix aired every other day. It had become my favorite, to date, although I did hold a spot for Azkaban in my heart because of the cooler color palate used in the cinematography and the antique style of fade outs used in Harry’s Dementor attacks. My only sticking point with the film was that I had already established a connection with Richard Harris playing the role of Dumbledore. With his passing and the role being recast with Michael Gambon, I initially found it hard to accept him in my mind as the character but I think it plays a lot better as Dumbledore’s role increased with the later books. Not every wise old character can fight like Yoda, CGI or not.

It was at this time I made a conscious decision to try and read the books. Another reason became the ability to read them as pdf versions instead of reading the actual book. Finding some websites that offered them as free downloads; I pilfered the first few books and began reading in what spare time I had. Like The Da Vinci Code the year before, I breezed through the first book and actually enjoyed it. Once again, I already had the voices, looks, and environment added from the films so it was easy to read. When I would sit at night in my room and read, I tried to read at least 20 pages and that was pushing it as far as my attention span was concerned. Now, I could churn through a hundred pages in my lunch hour. Yes, the conversion from book to electronic copy left me with a few misspelled words and head scratching. Was that word supposed to be like that because of the writer or was it a bad translation? After finishing the first book, I allowed myself to realize that reading wasn’t so bad.

I was still a long way from ever picking up Moby Dick or War and Peace, though. Over the next year I read another book, The Zombie Survival Guide. This was actually a really good book and I highly suggest reading it. It's a sort of metaphor for post 9/11 survival tactics during a breakdown of society from zombie outbreaks. I am just about ready to get eyeballs deep into World War Z because the movie is about to be made. However, reading once more took a back seat to other distractions. Playstation 3 and Wii gaming along with creating designs for my CafePress store occupied my free time and I couldn’t push myself to read more books. That was until the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie.

Now, remember in the last post how I mentioned that my love of films prompted me to read both this book and the last one before seeing The Half Blood Prince film? Really, you don’t? Well, click here…I’ll wait. Finished? OK, moving on. I made the decision to read the last two books because I felt I owed it to myself to at least see what I was missing from watching just the films, especially now that the stakes had been raised. I knew that this penultimate Potter book was going to be important to the overall series. It sort of jumps the shark…but in a good way. Until this book, primarily all of the action either happens at Hogwarts, or The Dursley's. In Half Blood Prince we see more of the "muggle" world and a few new locations. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but unless you live in a Utah religious compound, you probably know how it ends. Someone important dies. Someone betrays Hogwarts. This is why I felt the need to read the book first. Now, it is probably a fact that I will be disappointed in the movie. After all, I’ve seen all of the previous films before I read the books. The extra scenes and dialogue, that were left out of the films serve as a sort of director’s cut with deleted scenes for me. I even know how the last book ends, but I didn’t care. I wanted to read this book before the movie came out, even though it was already over two years old. I just didn't look forward to reading over 600 pages.

I read it in two days. Between lunches, and every spare moment I could muster, I read 652 pages in two days. I have never read that many pages in that little time. I immediately downloaded a faithfully converted copy of Deathly Hallows and read that in three. That’s how addictive it became to me. Now, my wife has eclipsed me by reading three of the four Twilight books in less time. She has probably read three books in her life and they were all pregnancy related while she carried our daughter. One of her piano students recommended reading Twilight and she is hooked. She keeps trying to sway me, but I still won’t touch that series. We even borrowed the film to watch it and I protested over watching it Sunday night. We had taken our daughter to the zoo and she was hell bent on wanting to watch it. I told her I would not stay up until 2:00 AM watching that film on a Sunday night.* She agreed to wait.

Reading popular fiction has become a sort of heroin to us this last week. We’ve certainly neglected our daughter’s needs. Even though we are in the same room with her, we have our noses buried in these books as she is left to fend for herself. Although, I will say the effect has rubbed off on her. She has brought me the same ten books every day, asking me to read them to her. Sometimes, we read them twice in one day. We’ve gotten to the point where we have become so engrossed in our own reading that we told her to read her books herself. She’s only two and the other day she sat on the couch, reciting almost word for word, Goodnight Moon. As she turned the pages, she recited the words on them. While it is probable that she has memorized the story, it was still a sight to behold. Perhaps she will be a reader early on and make her old man proud.





*By the way, I stayed up until 1:30 AM Monday morning to finish it, getting only four hours of sleep before work. Hey, a half hour is a half hour.

Next up Part Three.

The Boy Who Read

PART ONE

I hate to read. Let me rephrase that, I loathe reading. This is quite an odd statement from someone who had an insane desire to be a great writer, huh? That being said, I just finished books six and seven in the Harry Potter series in just under a week. Why? Because I love movies.

Now, before your head explodes trying to analyze that statement, let me take you back to the end of the 70s. It’s 1978 and I am only three years old. I cannot recall myself the events that took place in this recount, but I can relay what I have been told by family members. The tale itself has become the stuff of table talk during holiday gatherings among my family. By this time, my brother was at the age of ten and my sister was 13. By requirement, reading literary works was thrust upon us in certain classes by some teachers who were of age during the 60s. One of which made it a point to have his class read JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series as well as The Hobbit.

Now, it was at this time that Ralph Bakshi released an animated version of the first two books in the trilogy under the name of The Lord of the Rings. It was memorable because of its style of using live action battle scenes rotoscoped to produce an animated look. It was also remembered as being only half a film because there was no mention of a Part One anywhere indicating that the movie would be continued later. I remember it…yes I said I remember it…because it was the first movie I ever saw. Let me clarify previous statements made by me saying that Star Wars: A New Hope was the first movie I ever saw. I should say that it was the first movie I ever remembered seeing. Lord of the Rings came out a year before I saw Star Wars in the theater when it was rereleased a second time in 1979. I remembered seeing Lord of the Rings, but did not realize that it had occurred before Star Wars because I did not realize that I saw the later version. Make sense? No? Good, moving on.

Anyway, the reason why this is a story told around the dinner table at Thanksgiving and Christmas is because apparently I explained it to my parents. That’s right; a three year old explained the plot of Tolkien’s story to his parents. Like I said, this is what I have been told by my family. I don’t remember adding commentary to the film. I’ll take their word on it.

Recollections aside, this began a pattern in my upbringing. “Why read the book, when you can watch the film?” I thought. So much time could be saved by spending two hours in front of the television instead of reading hundreds of pages over the course of days. Well, as you all are aware, part of the argument is that filmmakers get it wrong nine times out of ten when it comes to adapting a literary piece of work. They also get it wrong when adapting a video game but that is a tale for another time. The other, more important, half of that argument is that reading taps into that one thing that drives the five senses, the mind. When you read something, your imagination has to fill in the gaps on the page. What does the character and his/her surrounds look like? How does their voice sound? What does the world smell like? Feel like? Taste like? These are things that the reader supplies on the journey from Chapter One to The End and it makes for a much more enriched experience. I never got that at a young age. I was all about, somebody else can do the work of filling up the canvas, I just want the end product. Regardless of what television characters like Jeffrey from Voyagers or Cap’n O.G. Readmore had tried to pound into my brain about going to my local library, I would rather watch the film than read the book. Imagine the scene in Back to School where Sally Kellerman tells Rodney Dangerfield about several books to which he replies, “great film.”

Still, I read for class but never for fun. It was hard to cheat and watch the film in those days because home video was still in its adolescence and not every classic that had been adapted into a film was available as a rental. Sometimes, I just faked it and it showed in my papers for school. I can probably count on one hand how many books I actually read for assignments and how many I bullshitted my way through explaining in a book report. There was a Hardy Boys book that I butchered, piecing together bits of plot and making up the rest. I was supposed to read Brave New World for an Eighth Grade English assignment and instead read parts of Stranger in a Strange Land because I just couldn’t get into the other book. I also figured that perhaps the teacher would know I was lying because she would have boned up on my original title in order to grade my paper. Switching at the last second might have thrown her off her guard. It was still on the reading list but she seemed very perturbed that I shifted gears and didn’t tell her. Of the books I actually read in their entirety, I can list Animal Farm, Johnny Tremain, Call of the Wild and White Fang as the only ones that stuck out.

Sometime in my mid teens I had a slight change of heart. It was around 1988 and Stephen King had come into my world. I had seen Firestarter, Christine, The Running Man, The Shining, Creepshow 1 and 2, Cujo, Children of the Corn, Cat’s Eye, Maximum Overdrive, and Stand By Me by this time and thought…maybe I should try reading one of his books. That book was The Gunslinger. The first part of the Dark Tower series. It had been released six years earlier in print, but this was the first time I had ever seen it when it in paperback. I snatched up a copy and spent my evenings just prior to falling asleep going through this book with as much fervor as I had watching Star Wars growing up. I was sucked into the world King created without even realizing that it was interwoven with all his other stories. In essence, The Dark Tower was the source from which all his material sprang forth into the ‘real world’ if you could it that. I was like a child who had grown up inside a house, content in my surroundings, not realizing that an even bigger space waited on the other side of the door. I soon found myself reading the second and third book as well as Christine, It, The Body, The Running Man, and The Tommyknockers. Then I branched out into other popular fiction writers like Dean R. Koontz and read Phantoms and Watchers.

In high school I hit that same wall I hit before; reading classics for class was boring. The Red Badge of Courage, the Last of the Mohicans, and other required reading was given a cursory glance instead of my full attention causing me to try and pass tests and write papers with minimal knowledge of the subject. It seemed as though I was only interested in 80s and 90s popular fiction, but not classics. After high school, that suffered as I only picked up a few books from which I had already seen the film like Jurassic Park and The Silence of the Lambs. I had even picked up the fourth Dark Tower novel, Wizard and Glass, but to date, have not finished it. Though, I have it and Wolves of the Calla in audio format and have heard most of book four. Required reading in college had put an overall end to my leisurely reading and I had not read another book until 2006.

For someone who prides himself on being a historian on pop culture, full of useless trivia and quotes from film and television, I found myself not jumping on the bandwagon of fads at their onset. Like I had mentioned, The Silence of the Lambs and Jurassic Park were bestsellers when they were released but I didn’t bother to pick them up until years after I had watched the film versions, using them as a primer for envisioning the voices of the characters and their surroundings making for a much quicker read. That was the pseudo basis for my reintroduction to the printed word in 2006 when I began to read The Da Vinci Code. Once again, we are talking popular fiction, not classics. But this time around, I read the book before I saw the movie. Still, I had cheated a little because I could see and hear in my mind the voices and likenesses of Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, and Alfred Molina. I’d say I came a long way in terms of accepting books again into my life. The next year, I found myself revisiting a phenomenon that had began 10 years prior of which I swore I would not belittle myself to reading. And that my dear readers is where Part Two picks up and the aforementioned puzzling statement about reading books because of a love of film will make more sense. Stay tuned.