THE READING OF MANY BOOKS…

So many books read, so many nurtured and kept for years for re-reading, so few reread, so how do I pick one of the most importance to me at this time? The importance of a book has differed at different times in my life. The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle, all of the Hemingways, The Catcher in the Rye, and the classics, so many read as class projects and so meaningful at the time, but important to me today? For this day and time, I’ll choose the first book I can remember reading… The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little. “The sky is falling!” cried Chicken Little”. The year,? Perhaps 1920? It is important today because it brings back the good times long past when I would stretch out on the couch, and read, along with my mother’s prompting I assume, this first significant book of the thousand of books that followed. And, I do also recall lying on the floor, (but not on the carpet!), with the Sunday comics, “Bringing Up Father” and, by applying a wet bit of cotton, turn the black and white cartoons into color. There was no color printing in the newspaper at the time and, by chemical ingenuity, the “New York Journal” provided this fillip of the coming 4-color printing that soon followed. “Chicken Little” also reminds me of the ticking of the pendulum clock, in our living room, a gowned young lady holding the fulcrum of the pendulum as the clock ticked away the hours, and the aroma of the Frostilla water my mother used. I can still recall the bottle on the dresser. I checked this out some time past when I first got into using the computer and I was correct in every detail of the glass container. And seeing my first picture show, a “Pathe News” at the corner movie house, with the strange aroma of the strong cleanser used in theaters at the time. And my aunt taking me to see “The Thief of Bagdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., at the Globe Theater on lower Broadway. Important books? I’ll choose The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little, as a book significant to me at this time at this place.