Good morning, all! Another hot muggy day at 7:40 am. I have laundry and a full day on DARLING OF THE DAY. Lord.
TOD: My mother's taste in reading declined the further away from reality she moved, but when I was young, she read bestsellers, which had no appeal to me, as well as READER'S DIGEST, which I liked for the jokes and other ephemera; occasionally, I'd find an excerpt that appealed to me and I'd track the book down at the public library. Two that come to mind are TOO MANY GHOSTS by Paul Gallico and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson.
My father never read more than a newspaper twice a day, CINCINNATI ENQUIRER in the morning and the MIDDLETOWN JOURNAL in the evening, and of the books my mother kept around the house, I believe the only one I ever read was GONE WITH THE WIND, which was her favorite novel. Even though we were lower middle class, my parents never stinted on books for my brother Tom and me. Since I was reading by age four, I have memories of a Little Big Book of Disney's CINDERELLA around 1951, tons of Little Golden Books, a strange collection of fairy tales that included Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," and hundreds and hundreds of comic books, primarily Disney and Little Lulu. It was a Scrooge McDuck comic about the golden fleece that turned me to mythology and Homer's two epics. Around 1954, my favorite book was THE WIZARD OF OZ, which was given to my by my Aunt Jean, who became my surrogate mother after she and her husband learned they would never have children. Many of my books between 1954 and 1960 were gifts from her. In fact, it was my Uncle Harold who, watching me draw one day, determined I needed glasses from the proximity of my face to the paper. I don't think my Mother ever noticed me that closely.
Like DRPogue, I was given Roy Chapman Andrews' ALL ABOUT DINOSAURS in 1956 on a trip to Kansas City, MO, and for a while, dinosaurs and the comic TUROK SON OF STONE were my major obsessions. On the same trek to Missouri, we saw the film of THE KING AND I, and musical theatre, especially Rodgers & Hammerstein, became my next obsession. At some point in this period, too, I read Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN and LITTLE MEN, and TOM SAWYER.
I liked BEN-HUR, which I read either before or after I saw the film in 1958 (?), but I found QUO VADIS? impossible. Aound 1960, I bought a paperback titled something like GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, which listed great books under categories and offered a brief synopsis. If a book sounded appealing to me, I'd take the bus to the public library and check it out; that got me to Aaron Copland's books on music and the drama section. Suddenly, plays and their dialogue became fascinating, and I went through anthologies and every single play on the shelves of the public library. Some of those early 20th Century translations of Greek, Scandinavian, and Russian drama are lethal, however, and left their mark on my feelings about the playwrights. It took me a long time to get over the trauma of a poor Chekhov translation!
There was one great Signet collection, 8 GREAT COMEDIES, which introduced me to THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and ARMS AND THE MAN. This volume and the THREE PLAYS BY THORNTON WILDER became two of my favorite books. Still are.
My other favorite books from the mid-1960s were two great reference books, THE VICTOR BOOK OF THE OPERA and THE VICTOR BOOK OF BALLET, which increased my listening enjoyment by introducing me to composers I knew nothing about and works that have been favorites for a long time now.
