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Bookchat: The Reading Life [1]

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Date: 2022-09-14

The Coup Trilogy by Judith Moffitt (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JLYQ2QD)

Welcome to bookchat! Where you can talk about anything; books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.

Once upon a time, I didn’t read. I don't remember that time. I taught myself to read before I attended school and I haven't skipped a day since. Reading is like breathing for me.

People are always amazed that I read several hundred books a year. How is that possible?

It’s easy. I simply read whenever I have the chance. I read a bit before I get out of bed in the morning. (Now that I’m retired and not in so much of a rush.) I read while eating lunch, if I didn't go out with a group. I read while watching tv. (Honestly most shows are so predictable and slow, I only have to pay attention for about five minutes out of every hour.) I read when I have to wait somewhere like a doctor’s office or the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles). There are tons of opportunities to read every day, which was true even before I retired.

But why do I read so much? What do I get out if it? And wouldn't it be better to spend more time socializing with actual people?

Let’s start with that last question. I socialize with people as much as I desire to, which, admittedly, is not all that much. If I wasn't reading I would be doing something else not people-oriented. Because being around people drains me. I feel exhausted after being around people and I need to spend days, if not weeks, gathering the energy to spend time with them. I do not do spontaneous peopling.

I grew up in a family of readers. There was no place in our house you could go that didn't have books. And there was no trying to limit us to “age-appropriate” (that means boring when you read at the college level in elementary school) books. If I could get the book in house, the local drug store that served as our nearest bookstore, or the library, I could read it. Heck, I read my older brother’s actual college textbooks. Probably more thoroughly than he did. (He was eight years older than I was, so I started at age ten). Books were the pathway to other places when you live in rural WV. And to be honest, they were also the escape from my abusive father at times. I would go hide in the closet (under some boxes and clothes) and read, so he couldn't find me.

Once I left home, I no longer needed to find a place to hide. Still, I kept on reading. Depression took over my life, I kept on reading. I found time for other things, too. I trained my horse; I made art; I lifted weights and did yoga; I fell in love; I traveled for my job. I still kept on reading.

In the days before the Kindle, I took at least two books with me everywhere. Travelling for weeks at a time for work was particularly difficult, More than half my luggage was books. Who cared if I had to do laundry more often as long as I didn't run out of things to read.

Through books, I visited Paris, London, Thailand, South Africa, the Intercoastal Waterway to Florida, the Smoky Mountains, the plains of the Dakotas, West Point, China and so many more places both in time and space. I read about the history of the Supreme Court, the biography of several female rock singers, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the founding of Israel, what the infrastructure behind an airport was, how Hawaii rose out of the sea. I fought the Civil War through letters home. I sat at the Round Table with Merlin and Arthur, I climbed the pyramids. I learned that trees communicate with each other, that birds are smarter than the term bird brain indicates, that different cultures cook differently. I thought deeply about what it was like to be in a POW camp. (One of my friends had a father who had been a POW in WWII, so the topic seemed especially necessary to understand.)

And then I let my imagination soar as I devoured volume after volume of speculative fiction. I walked through Middle Earth, I lived in a moon colony and on Mars. I made first contact with alien species. I fell in love with Pern, with Barrayar, with Manticore, Maradaine, and Elantra. I learned about psychogenesis. I helped a robot solve a mystery. I interacted with Artificial Intelligences. I was challenged to think about the role of women in society and other ways that government could work. I rode a sandworm through the desert, flew a dragon in the Napoleonic Wars, and solved Riddles concerning the three stars on my forehead.

I raced through books on dressage training from Xenophen to Alois Podhajsky. I learned quilting and needlepoint, I studied books on writing and then studied my favorite books to see how the authors accomplished their task. I polished my understanding of photographic techniques, I learned calculus and statistics and how to paint. I learned weight lifting exercises. I read books on spirituality and comparative religions.

Books led to real-life adventures, too. They led to a trip to see Pony Penning in Chincoteague, VA, to a month spent exploring Hawaii, to a degree in political science (thank you, Robert Heinlein), to training and showing a dressage horse. They gave me the courage to learn to paint and the knowledge to improve my photography. They led to a vibrant and varied sex life (no details here, some things are private, but I suspect even most of the non-readers of my generation read The Joy of Sex.) They taught me to cook Indian dishes, and Spanish dishes, and, most recently, Persian dishes. And the cuisine of so many other cultures.

Reading eventually led to writing. And now I have five published science fiction and fantasy books with two more in editing. (If you want to read them, you can find them here: Books By Judith Moffitt)

Books have graced my life with so much more life than I could have ever experienced without them.

Partial list of books /authors or author/subjects referenced in the diary. If the books is part of a series, I generally only list the first book. Some of these I read so long ago, I no longer remember the titles.

Paris – The Paris Library by Charles

London – Rivers of London by Aaronovitch and Cater Street Hangman by Perry

Thailand – Anna and the King of Siam by Landon. (I found this in my grandparents’ house in a closet in the entryway where they had bookcases behind the coat rack. It was a magical place.)

South Africa – The Covenant by Michener

Intercoastal Waterway - Narrow Dog to Indian River: How a Man, a Woman, a Dog &Their Narrowboat Conquered the Atlantic Intracoastal by Darlington

Smoky Mountains –Christy by Marshall

Dakotas – Little House on the Prairie by Wilder

West Point - Tough As Nails: One Woman's Journey through West Point by Dwyer and Choosing the Harder Right: West Point’s 1976 Cheating Scandal by Ringgold (Interestingly, these two books took place in the same era, but there is not much intersection between them.)

China — The Good Earth by Buck

American Civil War –I took a class in the Civil war in college and we read extensively from original sources including newspapers and letters. I also read a book of letters from the war that I found at the gift shop in Harper’s Ferry WV, but have long since forgotten the title. A couple of interesting books about the Civil War era are The Killer Angels by Sharra, Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails by Wheeler, and Stealing Secrets by Winkler

Round Table – The Merlin Trilogy by Stewart (you don’t get to the Round Table in book 1), The Once and Future King by White

Pyramids – Crocodile on the Sandbank by Peabody

Supreme Court History – the textbook for my Constitutional History Class, title long lost to memory, Sisters in Law by Hirshman, and Something Must be Done about Prince Edward County by Green

Female Rock Singers– Girls Like Us by Weller

Third Reich - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer. Other interesting WWII books are Morrison’s History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II (all 15 volumes), Tears of Honor by Ardaiz, From Here to Eternity by Jones, War and Remembrance by Wouk, Sarah’s Key by Rosnay

Israel – Exodus by Uris

Airport Infrastructure – Airport by Hailey (This book really made me think about the infrastructure behind things for the first time.)

Hawaiian Islands –Hawaii by Michener

Tree Communication- The Hidden Life of Trees by Wohlleben

Bird Brain - Mind of the Raven by Heinrich

Cookbooks –Treasures of the Mexican Table by Jinich and Cool Beans by Yonan ( I have so many, I just picked onteh two good ones closest to where I was writing this to save research time.)

POW Camp – Von Ryan’s Express by Westheimer

Middle Earth – The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein

Moon Colony – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein

Mars – Red Mars by Robinson

First contact with an alien species - Foreigner by Cherryh

Pern –Dragonflight by McCaffrey

Barrayar -The Warrior’s Apprentice by McMaster Bujold (There are several ways to start this series, I used the path I took in.)

Manticore – On Basilisk Station by Weber

Maradaine – A Murder of Mages by Maresca (His main work is a set of braided trilogies, the first book of any of the four trilogies is a reasonable start for the series. I picked the one I started with.)

Elantra — Cast in Shadow by Sagara

Psychogenesis – Cyteen by Cherryh

Robots and mysteries – Caves of Steel by Asimov

Artificial Intelligence – 2001: A Space Odyssey by Clarke

Role of Women in Society – When Women Were Dragons by Barnhill, Lady Astronaut by Kowal, and Silence of the Girls by Barker

How governments work – My textbooks in college including The Republic by Plato, The Complete Works of David Hume by Hume (although I read them separately back then, I spent a whole semester on all his works) Also from fiction – Starship Troopers by Heinlein (the book that led me to major in Political Science) and The Phoenix Trilogy by Wren

Sandworms – Dune by Herbert

Dragons in the Napoleonic Wars - His Majesty’s Dragon by Novik

Riddles – The Riddle-master of Hed by McKillup

Dressage training — The Art of Horsemanship by Xenophon and Complete Training of the Horse and Rider by Podhajsky

Quilting – I had a gazillion of these back when I quilted, don’t remember the names now

Needlepoint – Bargello Stitch by Angell (I designed one of my needlepoint projects based on what I learned in this book.)

Writing – Writing Wonder by Farland (You owe it to yourself to read this one if you write any kind of speculative fiction.)

Authors whose writing techniques I studied – Cherryh, Pierce, Weber, Penelope have all influenced my own writing

Photographic Techniques - The Photographer's Eye by Freeman and Understanding Exposure by Pederson

Calculus and Statistics – textbooks from long ago

Painting – The Tao of Watercolor by Carbonetti

Weight Lifting –Like quilting, I had a gazillion of these by in the 1980s and 90s. Don’t remember the titles.

Spirituality and comparative religions – Cultivating the Mind of Love by Hanh and When Things Fall Apart by Chodron. I read a lot about every religion back in junior high (late 1960s), but other than the main spiritual texts like the Koran and the Bible, I couldn’t tell you the titles.

Pony Penning - Misty of Chincoteague by Henry

Sex life - The Joy of Sex by Comfort

My own books – The Coup Trilogy (A Line in the Sand, To the Bitter End, Rising from the Ashes) - A science fiction trilogy about a military coup and the war that follows it. The first book leads up to the coup, the second covers the war, the third covers the aftermath.

Confrontation at Nuxvar – A fantasy about an old woman mage being asked to save the world yet again.

Unwanted – a fantasy about a school for unwanted children told in two voices, one a student at the school and one the Headmistress. For me, it was the difference in how the two see the same events that was interesting about the story.

My beloved Chico died this morning. He was 17 and had a good long life for a dog. But I’m gutted, so I may not be as responsive as I might normally be to this diary. I will try to get on this evening and read through everything. I hope that you enjoy what I’ve written.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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