Hard read

[31FordA]

I didn’t care for most of the “classics” we had to read in school. Among the worst of the worst were “House of Seven Gables” by Hawthorne, “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, and “Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger. Fortunately my love of reading survived in spite of school. I prefer reading history, the majority of the fiction I enjoy is Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes. The only mandatory reading assignments I enjoyed were “Shane”,“Robinson Crusoe” and “April Morning”.

One of my first book reports was in 4th grade, our teacher let us do a book report on any book we wanted. Mine was on “Reilly:Ace of Spies”. My teacher wasn’t expecting that one from a ten year old. One teacher told my parents my book reports, on books I picked, stood out, mainly because the teachers had never heard of the books until my report.

 

[Buford57]

I have been a voracious reader since grade school. I plowed through most of 19th and early 20th Century US and British classics by the time I finished High School both because I enjoy reading and because some of them were considered "important" and should be read. I would force myself to finish books I thought were boring or written in a style I didn't care for, including much of Faulkner. At some point I realized the self-improvement ship had sailed and resolved not to force myself to read anything I didn't find pleasant or thought provoking. Then, after 50 years of mixing fiction and non-fiction I dropped the fiction entirely for about a decade until last year when I binged on Rand, Lewis, Steinbeck works I had overlooked and Roger Pinckney. It was my retirement gift to myself. The Bible has been a constant and each year I try a new translation, but I no longer feel compelled to read anything I don't enjoy.

 

[16thVACav]

Did you ever figure it out, or does it still elude you?

I finally decided it was an outstanding example of entertaining album art from a musical group that understood its target audience.