Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood showed me how good journalism can get

Staying power

Newspapers - five of them each day — have consumed my reading hours for the past decade. That leaves little time for books, which often sit in stacks on my bedroom dresser, unopened, until they're finally returned to the library or to the friend who lent them. But it's the few good books - not the mundane details of a thousand newspaper stories — that are memorable. These are a few I value most:

Curious George: The Babar stories and The Cat in the Hat also helped me learn to read, but none of those characters was as cute as this little monkey.

• "The Gift of the Magi" and "To Build a Fire": I first heard these short stories — written by O. Henry and Jack London, respectively — when my elementary school teachers read them aloud in class. They revealed to me the power and magic of good writing.

The Little Prince: More magic.

Sponsored
Sponsored

The Jungle: When I was in junior high, Upton Sinclair's story of the hardships of turn-of-the-century immigrants and unscrupulous businessmen showed me a side of American life I didn't know existed.

1984 and Animal Farm: Orwell's horrific visions of totalitarian society propelled me through these two novels. Ten years later, I found his Down and Out in Paris and London just as riveting and much less distressing.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Manchild in the Promised Land: These books about ghetto life sparked my enduring interest in black literature. But the fiction of Jean Toomer and other, lesser-known black authors has more staying power. Like these lines spoken by a character in Toomer's short story "Blood-Burning Moon": "But words is like the spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em, there's times when they jes wont come." And Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez and Ralph Ellison.

• Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund calmed my turbulent high school years. Hesse also gave me a peek at Jung, though I didn't know it then.

• Carl Sandburg's poems let me see what Chicago looked like before I saw it. But nothing captures the essence of America better than lines like these, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "The pure contralto sings in the organloft,/ The carpenter dresses his plank... the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,/ The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,/ The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm...."

• William Faulkner's insights into the South and black-white relations made it worth struggling through Absalom, Absalom! And reading Faulkner also heightened the insights into human emotion offered by Sherwood Anderson (especially Winesburg, Ohio), Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises), James Agee (A Death in the Family), and most any short story by Raymond Carver.

• Truman Capote's In Cold Blood showed me how good journalism can get.

• Jack Nicholson is a great actor, and the fact that he and Meryl Streep couldn't rescue Ironweed is more a testimony to William Kennedy's writing ability than the actors' shortcomings.

• Joyce Carol Oates: Is there a more prolific and more riveting contemporary American author than the woman who wrote Wonderland?

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Wild Wild Wets, Todo Mundo, Creepy Creeps, Laura Cantrell, Graham Nancarrow

Rock, Latin reggae, and country music in Little Italy, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Harbor Island
Next Article

Extended family dynamics

Many of our neighbors live in the house they grew up in

Newspapers - five of them each day — have consumed my reading hours for the past decade. That leaves little time for books, which often sit in stacks on my bedroom dresser, unopened, until they're finally returned to the library or to the friend who lent them. But it's the few good books - not the mundane details of a thousand newspaper stories — that are memorable. These are a few I value most:

Curious George: The Babar stories and The Cat in the Hat also helped me learn to read, but none of those characters was as cute as this little monkey.

• "The Gift of the Magi" and "To Build a Fire": I first heard these short stories — written by O. Henry and Jack London, respectively — when my elementary school teachers read them aloud in class. They revealed to me the power and magic of good writing.

The Little Prince: More magic.

Sponsored
Sponsored

The Jungle: When I was in junior high, Upton Sinclair's story of the hardships of turn-of-the-century immigrants and unscrupulous businessmen showed me a side of American life I didn't know existed.

1984 and Animal Farm: Orwell's horrific visions of totalitarian society propelled me through these two novels. Ten years later, I found his Down and Out in Paris and London just as riveting and much less distressing.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Manchild in the Promised Land: These books about ghetto life sparked my enduring interest in black literature. But the fiction of Jean Toomer and other, lesser-known black authors has more staying power. Like these lines spoken by a character in Toomer's short story "Blood-Burning Moon": "But words is like the spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em, there's times when they jes wont come." And Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez and Ralph Ellison.

• Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund calmed my turbulent high school years. Hesse also gave me a peek at Jung, though I didn't know it then.

• Carl Sandburg's poems let me see what Chicago looked like before I saw it. But nothing captures the essence of America better than lines like these, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "The pure contralto sings in the organloft,/ The carpenter dresses his plank... the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,/ The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,/ The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm...."

• William Faulkner's insights into the South and black-white relations made it worth struggling through Absalom, Absalom! And reading Faulkner also heightened the insights into human emotion offered by Sherwood Anderson (especially Winesburg, Ohio), Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises), James Agee (A Death in the Family), and most any short story by Raymond Carver.

• Truman Capote's In Cold Blood showed me how good journalism can get.

• Jack Nicholson is a great actor, and the fact that he and Meryl Streep couldn't rescue Ironweed is more a testimony to William Kennedy's writing ability than the actors' shortcomings.

• Joyce Carol Oates: Is there a more prolific and more riveting contemporary American author than the woman who wrote Wonderland?

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

The Fellini of Clairemont High

When gang showers were standard for gym class
Next Article

Extended family dynamics

Many of our neighbors live in the house they grew up in
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader