I read looking out, not in. I don’t need to see me in books. I read to know. Know new ideas, new places, new people. I read because I am curious about the world around me, the people in it, the things they do.
As a kid I read from one end of Cabrini’s lower school library to the next. Then went on to the Burbank Public Library on Glenoaks Blvd, shelf by shelf, stack by stack. With four years at Alemany I plowed through the entire library as well as the University of Chicago’s Five Year Reading Plan.
I read about living in Alaska without the basics, about supervillians like Fu Manchu and great detectives like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I read lives of the Saints and stories about spies and those who fought and died in resisting the oppression of Germany in WWII. I read Edgar Rice Burroughs and John D MacDonald. I read history, short stories, long novels, novellas, comic books, chapter books. Name it, if a book came into our house I read it!