On a Lifelong Love of Books

I have vivid memories of reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Those were pretty stout books for a young boy just turning 10. I was inspired to read the trilogy after hearing from my Dad that my Uncle Jack had read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Outside of my Dad, my Uncle Jack probably had more influence on my development as a young boy/man than any other male in my immediate circle. Once I heard that my Uncle Jack read the Lord of the Rings, I had to read the series too. Thus began a lifelong love of books and reading.

As an introspective young boy, and then later an introspective young man, books allowed me to enter different worlds, travel back or forward in time, meet new people, learn new things, get inside the minds of some of the greatest intellectuals in history. And I could do it all for a few bucks. I could do all this stuff without ever leaving my house.

Astonishing.

My Dad did his part to encourage my passion for books. My Dad was not a wealthy man, having spent his entire professional life in service to his country (20 years in the Air Force followed by almost 20 years as a public high school teacher), but we always had more than enough money to be comfortable.

Most important, we had enough money to afford books. My Dad made a deal with my brother and I when we were young boys: He would buy us any book we wanted (age appropriate, of course), but we couldn’t get our next book until we finished the one we had just bought.

I took my Dad up on his offer with ferocity bordering on obsession. All throughout my formative years I read voraciously, tending towards fiction and fantasy until high school when I started reading political philosophy and biographies, after picking up and reading an article by William F. Buckley from my Dad’s copy of National Review.

I thought Buckley was one of the smartest people ever. He used huge weird words that forced me to think, to look up the words in a dictionary, to focus and concentrate on points he was making or trying to make. He challenged me. He forced me to seek out the source materials, like Burke and Russell. Reading tough stuff made me smarter, even if I look back now on some of the Buckley stuff as laughably verbose and often poorly reasoned.

In college I studied Computer Science and Philosophy. My reading in college tended towards moral philosophy, especially and in particular the ancient Greeks and the more well-known, modern philosophers like Neitzche and Kant. I was fascinated by how they wrote and thought and wrestled with intractable problems. I was completely and totally hooked, again.

Then I went to law school and all I did was read. I loved reading cases. Every case tells a human drama. Lots of people don’t like law school because basically all you do is read, all the time. But I loved law school. Because I loved reading already. I was doing what I loved.

As I’ve grown into adulthood, and moved towards middle age (yuck), my reading habits have changed (matured?). When I was trying to establish my own business and professional credentials, I read every self-help, business, marketing, and other like book that I could get my hands on. I must have read 200–300 such books over a 15 year span. They started to all sound the same, and some of them were awful, but some were fantastic and I figured if I got just one new insight from each book I read that made the entire book worth it.

I also got into Churchill stories on a trip to London with my wife and her parents, and ended up reading just about every Churchill book available. I’ve stood by Churchill’s side as he was taken captive in South Africa, made his escape, wrote about his escapades, then went on to serve as the greatest statesman of the 20th century. I was there when he stared down the Third Reich, when he had secret talks with Roosevelt about the A-bomb. When he was unceremoniously tossed out of office shortly after winning the War.

Books Are Magic

Think about the technology that makes up a book. A book is just a pattern of symbols set forth in some sort of order on multiple pages, be they digital “pages” or real book pages. You look at the symbols in the order prescribed by pre-set rules and the symbols tell you a story.

But a book is so much more.

When you read, you enter into someone else’s mind. You are inside the author’s head.

You travel where the author wants to take you. You see faraway lands, you are part of the team that built the Panama Canal, you are in the War Room as German bombs drop on London during the Blitz. You fall in love with Harry Potter or watch Ayn Rand create an entire philosophical system (a bad, unsustainable, immoral philosophical system) based on a simple story about a young architect. You see the future and get to re-live the past. All without leaving your couch.

Or you enter worlds that don’t exist anywhere else except in the author’s mind, and now, your mind. A good book can take you places that you could never otherwise go. A great book changes you permanently and profoundly.

Books have given me a perspective on life I would have never had, shown me different ways of thinking and living.

Books have comforted me when I needed comforting. Books have inspired me. Books have taught me great lessons and given me hours and hours of entertainment. My mom died when I was ten and I’ve even read books she liked because it made me feel like I knew her better.

If I was stranded on a desert island for a year by myself I’d take a bunch of books with me and leave me iPhone at home.

I hope my children will love books as much I do. I encourage them to read as much as I can. I think they enjoy reading already. That makes me very happy. Joyful.

I don’t want my kids to fall in love with reading so they can make “good grades” or get a “good job” or “make money” or for any other silly, valueless reason.

I want my kids to live a life with great books because a life lived alongside great books is a good enough end in itself.

A life of constant magic and joy.