May 3, 2024

Well, in truth, this is a different project – but it morphed from the original.

I created a Coggle (Mind Map) pictured at the top of this article for 2024. And that led me down a rabbit hole that turned into deciding to finally re-organize my books – chronologically by decade and to write about it while I do it.

I’ve previously organized by genre and author but I think this will be pretty interesting – to me. I haven’t had a particularly remarkable life – and it’s hard for me to remember much of it – but the books seem to anchor some things in time – we’ll see.

My daughter will be interested even if no one else is:)

1960 to 1970

I was 6 in 1960, so it was probably a couple of years before I started reading the three books pictured here. They were a gift, given apparently to my sister and me by my Dad and his wife Peggy.

I say apparently because it’s been many, many years since I knew that they were given to the two of us. The inscription was in Arabian Nights, and when I saw it tonight, it was as if I was seeing it for the first time. I don’t think you can give a book to two people—certainly not if I’m one of them. In any case, my sister didn’t read at that time, and I doubt she remembers them at all.

I however, spent many, hours with them. I spent the most time reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales – I rejected Pinocchio because it wasn’t the same as my beloved Disney version – and I never got that into the Arabian Nights either, but I read a few.

I learned to read phonetically when I was 6, so if you handed me a book and told me to read aloud I could do it. My mom loved to break out the encyclopedia and have me read. At the time reading at 6 was early. I think most parents in today’s world would say that is late – but in my time that was not the case.

I actually started reading when I was 8. I believe the first book I ever read was No, No Mrs. Goose. It is the 7th book from the left in the top shelf pictured here. I was 8.

These by no means represent all the reading I did between 1962 and 1970. At that time, most of the books I read were borrowed from the school library. We, that is I and my classmates visited the library every two weeks. We would return the books we had and choose 2 or 3 for the next two weeks.

Pippy Longstocking and Mary Poppins books were big favorites. Caddy Woodlawn, and anything I could find written by Carol Rye Brinkley. Little Women was my absolute favorite book, then anything written by or about Louisa May Alcott. Black Beauty, Beautiful Joe and Baby Island. I must have read that a dozen times. The Doll House – I still have my copy. Many, many biographies. Nancy Drew of course.

Reading was my refuge. My safe place.

In 1960 when I learned to read I was 6 in 1970 I was 16 – a lot changes in that decade. Reading tastes change quite a bit. At 16 I was reading Heinlen, and Tolkien and ?

(story of the Micky Spillane closet)

(story of the lost Little Women here)

(story of the Nancy Drew books)

1970 to 1980

July 7, 2024.

I graduated from Marshall High in 1972, I was 17 and I left home a couple of weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Julius, was born in 1978.

The late 60’s and early 70’s I was reading Hermann Hesse, Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand and I think this was when I started reading Mitchener.