The Cozy Book Store

The thing I liked best about that line shack was that one whole entire wall was a bookshelf, and one small wall was a magazine shelf.  There were also stacks of reading material thick on the warped-log floor.  I'd kick off my boots, pile up in front of the fireplace, breathe deeply of the piñon smoke, and slide off to visit strange new worlds.

That's what I'm inviting you to do here; kick your boots off, and pile up in front of the fireplace.  Breathe deep the campfire memories of your own youth.  Then slide off to visit strange new worlds.

Today there are two mad rushes of readers, one to read the latest and the most popular, and the other to read only the classics.  In truth both rivers are exciting with pools of deep waters where the mind can relax, or think and grow.  

The classics are like scriptures; they have stood the test of time and we somehow know even as we read them that our grandchildren will some day peruse those same words.  The books may wear out and fall apart just as the Dead Sea Scrolls deteriorated, yet the words of all our dead Homers still ring with life today.  Jack London, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Thomas Paine, Daniel Defoe; shall these masters ever die?  

The best sellers of today are like meteors streaking across the sky and most of them will soon be gone.  Across the sky another meteor rises to the azimuth and commands attention from the fascinated world below.  What a shame it is that so many of these meteors we ooh and awe over never leave a lasting trace.  Most of them are simply copies of someone else's style -- no more creative than the continuing saga of the Beverly Hillbillies.

Only the persistent masters of this craft can keep a string of readers eager to search out the best of their titles gone before.  As each new reader stumbles upon a truly wonderful author and recognizes the mother lode s/he will track the backlist to discover all the other nuggets left lying in the dust.  Some of these titles will become masterpieces for a short time, others for a longer span, but the real Homers of the human race are few and far between.

There is a third course, a stream I follow that often dwindles.  Occasionally it even runs underground.  This stream carries the debris of great books which somehow never make it to masterpiece status, but neither should they be forgotten so soon.

It is assumed by most readers that "classic" status is somehow achieved automatically.  "If the book possesses 'classic' essence then somehow it will not disappear" is the way our faulty reasoning goes.  Actually that classic status is never achieved automatically. 

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe completely disappeared from the American continent, for example.  Only the French intellectuals saved Edgar's immense powers of ratiocination from obscurity until America was ready for him again.  After his return his works stuck and are with us to this very day.  But if it hadn't been for the French, where would he be?

Knowing how easily great books can be lost, what I do, actively and persistently, is to sift through the long dead ashes for the great books with genius far above the molten mass of words created by our ballistic copycats of today, and remind my readers these books are still available, and well worth reading.  

"Big Caesar" by Charlton Ogburn Jr. is a prime example of a truly great book.  It is the story of a high school boy with some major problems that most of us can relate to.  It is probably meant for the YA market, but so good is it that even after 50 years I still relish it in its crumbling format. 

"Only Love" by Erich Segal is another good example of the titles I mean.  This is a masterpiece that if it were issued new again would be avidly read.  Instead it lingers now in dust.  If it could be republished, perhaps it would not die this time.  I'm sure the message in it would ring as joyously a century from now as it did when first published, if only something happens that it is read again.  Alas and alack, it's gone now.

What kind of books
do I like?

Some people will try to assure you they like this genrè, or that one.  Then when actual books are dredged up from their private book shelves -- it is immediately obvious their tastes are totally different from what they are claiming.   President Eisenhower is one example I remember well.  In a Reader's Digest review of "At Ease, Stories I tell to Friends" he personally assures his admiring public that he was not the big western fan that members of the press accused him of being.  The very next issue of Reader's Digest had a story in it about the man in the White House whose only job was supplying Eisenhower with westerns he had not already read.  

But then again, some of the mistaken favorites come from the books being lumped into the wrong category to begin with.  Dick Francis books, for example, are lumped in with MYSTERIES.  Actually they are novels, and adventure novels at that.  Those who like the best books of Dick Francis would probably like books by Jack London as well.  Anything written by Dick Francis is one I reward myself with when I have done an exceptionally good piece of work.

***
Star Crackers

Here are my favorites honestly gathered up from the time I was reaching out for maturity.

Jeff Sharra tops my list for pure writing genius.  His first book hit the top of the lists like a proverbial meteor, then stayed there like a classic.  That was great.  But then Jeff went on to do what most star crackers won't do; he IMPROVED his writing skills until his last book is far better than his first.  Anything written by Loup Durand is one I will read, again, and again.  If you know his other pen names, do let me know.

Anyone used to the writing style of Edgar Rice Burroughs might well be astonied to read The War Chief.  There isn't even a princess inside!  For background, Mr. Burroughs enlisted in the 7th Cavalry and saw active service in the Apache country of Southern Arizona where I did my most significant growing up.  This book tells of the bitterly harsh rearing of a boy in the Apache tradition, a white boy who became known as Shoz-Dijiji, the Black Bear, the adopted son of Geronimo.   The pace is fast, the setting is true and the background flat out enlightening.

The power and vision of Reuben Merliss is almost incredible in this novel. The reader is immediately swept up and carried forward on a wave of discovery and excitement.
From the day he gets off the bus until the day he becomes an intern Dan McDermott is battling from one to ten problems at a time. The pressure is overwhelming. Blood, sweat, love and tears reveal the intimate detail of being
Jewish
alone
desperate
poor
misunderstood
lied to
used
and somehow exalted.

This is the kind of reading experience I search for and feel compelled to recommend to my friends. As a professional author I admire those authors like Jeff Shaara and Reuben Merliss who have the ability to make words sing, to make life come alive with a symphony of dynamic force. The words leap off the page and into your heart. Understanding and compassion will well up in your breast.

I urge you to pick up this book and read it all the way through. It is a classic of epic proportions. It is a book you will keep on your shelf to read it over again.

The Daybreakers is my very favorite of Louis L'Amour.  This one was my introduction.  I loved it and sought out other books by this author.  After I'd gone through about 20 of them in three weeks I realized that no matter what the title said, the inside was very familiar.  After the 80th novel I never wanted to hear the author's name again.  So I went back and read Daybreakers once more -- it was just as good as ever.  I have read it three more times since then, as a reward.

The original edition of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury is selling for $300 now.  Some people call Ray a science fiction writer. I don't think so. I think he had something to say and set it very well.  I've read Dandelion Wine about 5 times now and it is still a keen delight.

Tony Hillerman is another author I favor.

Outlaw by Frank Gruber is a classic for me.  The story of Jim Chapman is so real I could taste the sweat.  Mr. Gruber (creator of the Wells Fargo television series) is one top notch writer.

City by Clifford D. Simak is currently out of print, but that doesn't change the quality of the writing inside those covers.

Star Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, and Red Planet are about my favorites of all time.   Tunnel in the Sky comes purty dang close.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart.  The whole Arthurian series she brings out is a delight to me.

Some other personal favorites I may be fuzzy on and I don't want to be taken to task for getting the title or author wrong.

Luke Short, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee or Huckleberry Finn, A. B. Guthrie's Big Sky, Little Britches by Ralph Moody, The Yearling, Where the Red Fern Grows, Grapes of Wrath, and Spin a Silver Dollar.

THE COLDEST WAR by James Brady (ISBN 0671725254) reads better than a novel.  I don't like war stories. I don't like the profanity, but the profanity here is real just like the men here are real life and three dimensional.  So many people go through a war and don't have the foggiest notion what their war is all about.  Some authors, like Hemingway, throw their own twist into everything and all you get is a vague feeling of Yeah, some people could have thought that way.  With Lieutenant Brady's book I got certitude this is the way it was all the way through.  I served a full tour of duty in Korea almost in the exact same spots Brady mentions.  When he mentions the Imjim I remember the bunch of us that piled in to wash off the accumulated filth of weeks of field service, and we dozed on the ice floes.  I know the terrain and I know the weather with water coming down like buckets of slop poured out to the hogs.  So, when Brady tells about not putting his poncho on when the rain was pouring down because it got him wetter I know exactly what he's talking about..  Yeah, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Brady was there and that these were his thoughts when he was there.   I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this historical memoir that reads like a great novel, but I realize all too well, it is fact.

Promise of Glory by C. X. Moreau was also a keen delight to read even though it is a book about war.  More and better than anyone else the author puts you into the heads and the hearts of the men fighting the Civil War.  If all the energy and the money that went into fighting the Civil War had been poured into repairing the nation how much better off this country would have been.  

Stormswift, by Madeline Brent, published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1984 is a tense adventure for me from beginning to end.  The scenes are real and the feeling comes across that this is exactly how it could have happened.  No punches are pulled just because the protagonist is a woman.  She survived and became stronger than the men around her without losing her femininity.  I never felt sorry for her because she never felt sorry for herself.

There are others, many, many others bubbling up from the past.  That's the trouble with good books, they can go on living for a lifetime in your mind -- and then some.  Every new author in the world is competing with the perennial masters; they must fulfill a crying need to make any money at all selling their books.

Okay, I'm off my soap box; I've quit promoting the kinds of books I loved.  Visit my choice of books for children web page, our westerns web page, and our mysteries web page.

Got an ambitious teenager in the house?
Send them to Whiz Teens in Business

"Horse Heaven"
by Jane Smiley.  Jane is adept at satire, "Horse Heaven." is full of hilarity and high intelligence, this racetrack epic is a winner on the nod.

"The Human Stain"
by Philip Roth
In "The Human Stain," a classics professor utters the word "spook" in public and is immediately hounded out of his job. Roth's latest draws a brilliant bead on the demons of political correctness--and includes yet another appearance by his tail-gunning alter ego Nathan Zuckerman.

"White Teeth"
by Zadie Smith
The subject of much transatlantic buzz, Zadie Smith's first novel takes on race and sex, class and history. Yet this is no polemical tract but a wickedly inventive comedy, with a large London cast and an unmistakable bite to its prose.

"Bee Season"
by Myla Goldberg
In this accomplished first novel, the 9-year-old heroine aces a school spelling bee and ends up driving her eccentric Brooklyn clan off the rails. "Bee Season" is a wise and witty exploration of family life--and appropriately enough, a real linguistic triumph.

"Anil's Ghost"
by Michael Ondaatje
Set in the wake of Sri Lanka's ferocious civil war, "Anil's Ghost" is truly a tale of paradise lost. Michael Ondaatje fuses the personal and political with his usual finesse--and his lyrical prose and off-center characters make this a worthy successor to "The English Patient."

"Stern Men"
by Elizabeth Gilbert
"Stern Men" chronicles the ancient enmity between two lobster-fishing communities off the coast of Maine. This isn't the comic novelist's traditional turf, but Elizabeth Gilbert squeezes some incredible mileage out of her crustacean quarrel, along with many a witty observation
about small-town angst.

"Tides of War"
by Steven Pressfield
After an earlier chronicle of heroic, spear-chucking Spartans, Steven Pressfield goes Greek on us once again. This time his novel revolves around charismatic warrior Alcibiades, whose exploits on and off the battlefield make for a properly Hellenic tour de force.