Let's talk books, er, talk about books, er, read books

 

My most recently started and completed books, respectively.

     I probably love books and reading more and longer than anything in my life, now that my beloved mother Sheila has been gone almost 5 years, with the exception of chocolate. Even music comes second to reading.

     Snapshots of what I am reading at a particular moment are snapshots of what is going on in my life, or at least my head, at that same moment. The vast majority of what I read is non-fiction; after reading a lot of fiction in classes in high school and college, where the breakdown was about 60-40 favoring non-fiction, it rose to 90-95 percent non-fiction for a long time, My interest in comic books and graphic novels in the 1980-2000s, which subsided for a bit but has grown again in the last 5-7 years, affected those percentages again. I do read some fiction (Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Conrad, Hemingway, Ibsen), but there is a still base in reality.

     So, I thought it was time to present such a snapshot, to let you readers know what is in my hands and in front of my eyes, as well as maybe help break this continuing writer’s block/fear of writing. These examples will be books; I do read/subscribe to other media outlets, including The Athletic, The New Yorker and The Buffalo News online, and read several news websites. But I am a book fan, a bibliophile, and like with newspapers, after more than 18 years writing and editing for them, I enjoy holding a book as well as perusing and buying them still.

     I am one of those persons who reads more than one book at a time, although if I really start getting into one, I will put down the others while I absorb one. I am currently reading “Antietam: The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War,” by James M. McPherson, as my upstairs media room/evening book, and downstairs in the living room, I am reading “Mapplethorpe: A Biography,” by Patricia Morrisroe. In my knapsack/at work, for the very few times I can read a book (Iunch time I walk, then check my phone/social media), I am reading “Straight White Male: Performance Art Monologues,” by Michael Peterson. And yes, I also have two books in the downstairs bathroom: “The New Trouser Press Record Guide,” third edition from 1989, and “History of Buffalo Music and Entertainment” by Rick Falkowski. Both books have been perused in short and long takes for a while.

     I didn’t want to go back too far, but the most recent books I finished reading, basically end of 2023-2024, are: “Devotion,” by Patti Smith; ”Apocalypse Nerd” and “Other Lives,” both by Peter Bagge; “All I Ever Wanted,” by Kathy Valentine; “John Constantine Hellblazer: Original Sins,” by Jamie Delano, John Ridgway, Alfredo Alcala, Rick Veitch and Tom Mandrake; “1916: The Easter Rising,” by Tim Pat Coogan; “Blubber,” by Gilbert Hernandez, and “How to Catch a Russian Spy,” by Naveed Jamali. I also find myself going back to old copies of Creem, Trouser Press and Musician magazines for specific articles.

     Don’t worry if any of this causes you to wonder how these books affect and illustrate my life; I think about it often and don’t have all the answers, and maybe avoid some of those answers. I suppose being a professional writer for almost 40 years fits somewhere in here.