Thursday, May 17, 2012

I used to read...

Maybe I didn't read as much as my friends, but I read. In the last couple visits to my favorite used book store, Dawn Treader Books, in Ann Arbor, I've been looking for books I've read. Some, to re-collect to my meager bookshelf. Some, merely to recollect.

Here are a few that I've found. Not sure I'm recommending them, especially since I read some of them in 6th grade. See if you recognize any of these.

Let's start at the top:

In the "Summer of Reading '76", I sampled my first Heinlein book, thin, quick, lite, just enough to get me started. I actually have a 'door into summer' time travel story of my own. Who knows. Working title, "Really Something." This is not the edition I read. Not the last Heinlein I read, either.

After my college graduation, still unemployed, I went to Florida with my parents where the day meant nothing but the beach for 6 hours at a shot. What to do? Borrow a stack of books from my friend Michael S. Rosecrans, and try to catch up on my reading. Among the stack came:
  • Several Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
  • 3 of the Little Fuzzy series, by H. Beam Piper
  • A few of the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer, pictured below
  • But my favorite on the was the epic A Canticle for Liebowitz, which I recently found and re-collected. Funny to think it opens with meeting an immortal wandering Jew.

In my "Summer of Reading '76", when I grabbed first, The Hobbit, later, Dune (whew), I also read these jewels:

http://judaschrist.com/blogsposts/new-adam.png

Paraphrasing from memory: The teacher yelled at me for staring out the window, and not paying attention. "You can't stare out the window and pay attention at the same time." Then, I realized that I could...  

His two halves of his brain were dual-cores. Intriguing. And he had extra knuckles on his hands, for dexterity. This is the exact edition I read.


"One man survived."

Ishmael survives the Pequod destruction, is rescued by the Rachel... which mysteriously skips forward in time to an Earth where the oceans have evaporated, and the sea life has taken to gas-bagged lighter-than-air flight. This included the whales, the sharks, and vast mats of predatory clouds miles long. He starts out falling from previous sea level to the jungle, a couple thousand meters below. Wait... did I just say "skip forward in time?


What we gonna do here is go back, way back... back into time...

If you recognize that as the opening of the Jimmy Castor Bunch hit "Troglodytes", then cut yourself a slice of Bye Bye Miss American Pie because Last Night You Didn't Get to Sleep At All. I was in 6th grade when these songs were popular, and THIS was the book I read. This is the exact edition of the "Ace Doubles". I don't remember anything about the books, but I remember the covers like they were only yesterday. And for those of you who don't know... these books were back-to-back readers.


Oh, look. Sea Seige has a big tsunami and a sea beast. Go figure!




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