Summer reading

I blogged about spending entire afternoons reading with Mom during past summers. Mom loved her Agatha Christie novels and Harlequin romances.

I had no interest in those, but I did devour Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Farris, and Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, and even H.P. Lovecraft

Had the internet and amazon existed back then, I'd have been drowning in books. But as it was, I had to rely on our library's inter-library loan system. Which kept me supplied with plenty of reading material.

You see I found a list of the most influential books in horror fiction at the back of King's non-fiction classic on the horror field, Danse Macabre.

Since I wanted to be a writer, I decided that reading some of the 'heavies' in the field would be a great way to study the craft of writing.

And that is pretty much what I did.

That summer, Mom and I devoured stacks of books. She would read in the recliner or at the kitchen table (listening to whatever game she could find on the radio) while I was out on the front porch in my favorite chair with my Walkman cassette player.

Those are some of my strongest memories of Mom.

And all that reading helped craft me into the person I am today.

I just hope KoKo's love for reading can be sparked like that.

I suggested that she read Twilight.

"No way. I can't read a book that long," she responded.

I think that's a bit of a phobia young readers have to get over.

I thought that too. But then I bought King's The Tommyknockers on the way to the cities one year and tore into it. After that, I took a sense of pride in walking around with a Bible sized book under my arm.

"You're going to read all of that?" my friends would ask.

"Of course!"

And it was great.