Thanks, Pop

September 2017 - Often nowadays I forget to write. I haven't written in any of my blogs for a while, and I haven't written a short story - until now, when I joined a Bachelor of Arts group through OUA and for Griffith University. My major will be "Creative Writing" - if I can do that! This prose is not a short story, but tells how my Pops got me to love reading. From that, I wrote.

My grandfather was a reader. He loved books and I became enchanted with them when I discovered his bookshelves hidden behind the huge couch. Before he taught me about his own books, he bought a book each for me and my brother and sisters every birthday and every Christmas. I remember that Enid Blyton's The Children of the Cherry Farm (1940) and The Magic Faraway Tree (1943) were written before I was born, but I didn't read them until I was a preteen: around 9 or 10. Dymocks' recent book page overview describes The Magic Faraway Tree in these words: "escape from the Land of Dreams, what goes wrong in the Land of Topsy-Turvy, and who drives a runaway train in the Land of Do-As-You-Please." (Dymocks).

My first novel from Pops was Laddie by Gene Stratton Porter, originally published in 1913. This book is described as a "true blue" semi-autobiography.

Around the time I was 12 years old I borrowed a book from him: Wilbur Smith's first novel When the Lion Feeds (1964). This was the adult start of my reading. Smith has written 39 books since 1964 - I haven't read all of those.

The Young Lions was from the library at high school. Irwin Shaw wrote this in 1948, at the end of WWII, and I didn't read it until 1970 - my third form year at high school. The intro on the reverse of the book said: "The Young Lions is a classic novel that vividly portrays the experience of ordinary soldiers fighting in World War II... Shaw expertly conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war." (Goodreads). WWII wasn't so close then. Twenty-two years after the book was written, and twenty-five years since the war finished. Why would I have read it then, in 1970, so many years after the end of the war according to too many school students? Yet this book opened my mind, drew me into it, and made me think of hell. Who was the 'bad' guy? Why was he 'bad'?

Shaw wrote 12 novels, alongside short story books, plays and screen plays. I read half of his novels which I felt were more for me than Smith's.

Some fiction entranced me, especially J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. My copy was a trilogy. Goodreads has pages of quotes from any author people love, and J.R.R. Tolkien was quoted from The Lord of the Rings. This one sets the warning to Frodo about what he is getting into: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." And this quote expressed how I would have felt if I was that old: "I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed!" (Goodreads). Much later in New Zealand the trilogy was made into three famous movies by New Zealander Peter Jackson. Many people watched them but have not read Tolkien.

The Lord of the Rings led me on to reading Stephen Donaldson's trilogy The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant which drew me further into fantasy. I followed with Marion Zimmer Bradley, David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, C.S. Lewis and many others. Fantasy and sci-fi were what I needed, even if I wouldn't live that same way as the unforgettable ensemble cast in those books did.

My favourite - and the basis of my bookshelf - was non-fiction The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy by Martin Gilbert (now Sir), 960 pages and first published in 1978. This book is recognised in the National Library of Australia, and other libraries throughout the world. On his personal website Gilbert wrote: "The systematic attempt to destroy all European Jewry - an attempt now known as the Holocaust - began in the last week of June 1941, within hours of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This onslaught upon Jewish life in Europe continued without respite for nearly four years. At its most intense moments, during the autumn of 1941, and again during the summer and autumn of 1942, many thousands of Jews were killed every day. By the time Nazi Germany had been defeated, as many as six million of Europe's eight million Jews had been slaughtered: if the killing had run its course, the horrific figure would have been even higher." (Gilbert, 2016).

This started my search for and collection of books written by Jewish authors, European authors writing about Jewish problems, and popular authors who wrote - sometimes for the first time - non-fiction history rather than their fiction: for example, Thomas Keneally, Ian Wilson. Keneally's 1982 book, Schindler's Ark, was a serious story of Oskar Schindler who saved so many Jewish people from Poland - 10 years later, in 1993, that was made into a movie, Schindler's List.

Beside these I shelved excellent voyagers - Jacques Costeau, Wade Doak, Michael Baigent, Jill and Leon Uris. I read about rock groups I had listened to throughout my youth and into my adulthood - Pink Floyd, U2, Alan Parsons. I contributed to the photograph book titled Dawn of the 21st Century.

I started collecting feminist books by Jane Fonda, Germaine Greer, Susan Faludi, Gloria Steinem and many others. The book cover of a biography of Steinem by Carol Heilbrun says that Steinem "searched within her own gender for a destiny unconstrained and unprescribed - for herself and for other women unambiguously at home in their bodies." (Heilbrun, 1995). She became a very well-known feminist and one of the founders of the National Women's Political Caucus in USA in 1971.

I very rarely read fiction these days. My collection is predominantly non-fiction now: my book shelves contain Griffith Reviews which I began collecting four years ago, political writing, examinations of crime, animals, workplace health and safety business, genetics, evolution and many, many more. I want to return to reading as much as I used to: books are very important to me and tell me how this world is doing.

As Albert Einstein said, "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." (Einstein). Books, from my Pops, were my future. This is my future.

Bibliography

DYMOCKS. Enid Blyton: The Magic Faraway Tree [Online]. Australia. Available: https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/the-magic-faraway-tree-by-enid-blyton-9781405272209/#.WcMUPsZx3IU [Accessed 18 September 2017].

EINSTEIN, A. From the memoirs of editor William Miller, Life magazine, 2 May 1955 [Online]. Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/wisd-nf.html [Accessed 21 September 2017].

GILBERT, M. 2016. Martin Gilbert: The Holocaust [Online]. Available: http://www.martingilbert.com/collection/holocaust/ [Accessed 19 September 2017].

GOODREADS. Irwin Shaw: When the Lion Feeds [Online]. Available: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/315511.The_Young_Lions [Accessed 18 September 2017].

GOODREADS. J. R. R. Tolkein: The Lord of the Rings [Online]. Available: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3462456-the-lord-of-the-rings [Accessed 18 September 2017].

HEILBRUN, C. G. 1995. The Education of a Woman, NY, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc.