Books Are My Friends

I've read hundreds of thousands of books in my lifetime. Maybe because I've read so many I don't remember the names of books, not even the one I'm currently reading.

Occasionally I do remember if the book really, truly moves me. Excites me like the Jason Bourne series. Right now I'm reading the Bourne Dominion. Before that I read...see, I can't remember but it was in the Bourne series. Every chapter is a cliffhanger.

I don't remember book titles, but I do remember the stories. The same way I don't remember people's names, but I remember their stories.  I never forget a face. It's funny when I'm in a conversation with the hubby and I'm trying to remember someone's name, instead I remember that she was at the Christmas party, you remember, she was getting a divorce, you know, she's got the kid with the purple braces...3 or 4 more references and the name comes out of the shadows.

Same way with books. My first favorite author as a kid, was James Baldwin, I read everything I could find by him. I was intrigued to find out he was gay as I read the book about the young guy in the choir. You know the story.

Before I chose my own books I read my Dad's paperbacks. He liked Army books. I still have one, it's called Hell's Brigade by Grant Freeling. Do you know why I remember it? Because I went to the bookshelf and pulled it out!

Then I started reading Donald Goins and Chester Himes and Iceberg Slim and Nathan Heard and James Alan McPherson and Jean Toomer and Richard Wright and Ishmael Reed and Ernest Gaines. I read everything that I suspected was about black people.


When I worked at my first real job at Woolworth's I was allowed to keep the paperbacks that they couldn't sell. They tore the cover off but that didn't bother me. I still have one of those, too. It's Master of Harrow by Frank Yerby.


I had read four novels by Frank Yerby before I realized he was black. Then I hunted down everything he'd written. I read The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Daddy Was A Numbers Runner by Louis Merriwether. Then I found the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and fell in love. I still hang on her every word today.


I'm sitting here now with a stack of books to tell you about. All of them saved from my youth. The hubby asks, "Why have you kept all of these old books?" I've kept them because they are meaningful to me. They are dear old friends. They shaped my personality and philosophy as a teenager. They continue to inform me today.

When I met the hubby I was so happy that he is a kindred spirit, a fellow reader. He, too, has influenced my reading choices, hence the Bourne series and Robert Parker (I would have read him anyway to hear more about Hawk!), James Patterson, Jonathan Franzen. I was already a Walter Mosley fan so we have that in common. Oh, and cowboy stories like the Berrybender series. Good stuff.

Once my mother told me that it was no wonder I couldn't keep a husband, since I always had my head in a book. I didn't really get that at the time. I'm right there, what's the problem? One ex-husband was actually threatened by my reading. I get it now, I may have been leaving him behind intellectually. What I did was keep marrying until I found a man who reads as much as I do! Ahhhhhhhhhh.