Ben by Daniel Shelton for July 18, 2018

Reading “Ulysses” in one hand, pushing the vacuum with the other, while making lunch for the kids or dinner. That will will work.

War and Peace is too cliché, try something by Chernow or McCullough or Achebe.

“Call me Ishmael,” ok, i’ve read it.

I’m on my 8th book this summer. It’s easy if you turn off the television.

Not sure why folks complain about Moby Dick I thought it was a interesting book that moved. If you want to punish them have them read Satanic Versus by Salmon Rushdie (the worst book I ever read)

A summer reading list is supposed to be fun and interesting. See me run away from that one.

Just what we all need, another “life coach”.

I swore off books on reading lists (as much as possible) in 8th grade. 1984 literally gave me nightmares for weeks (the fact that ‘Ben’ and ‘Willard’ came out around then and my brother had posters and everything else he could find from those movies probably didn’t help). I developed a fear of rats that hung on for a couple of decades.

I probably missed out on some good books, but I still read a LOT. And may I recommend pretty much anything by Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Zane Gray, Andre Norton, Leslie Charteris, Arthur Conan Doyle, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis… There’s a lot of good reading out there that never made any school reading list I every saw. Ok, Doyle made it to a couple.

Warning: the need for reading glasses can slow down reading speed significantly.

He’s too busy. There are so many computer games to play and that solitaire game won’t play itself.

I love reading, but I do hate being told what exactly to read.

I have a client in her 80s who reads paperback romance novels and trades them with her friends – there is a group of them who trade the books. Every now and then she asks me what I have read. My answers always surprise her. “A biography of Sir Arthur Sullivan.” “A history of a Jewish family – surname Mordecai – tracing the family from NYC in the late 1700s through their lives in Virginia, North Carolina and other southern states until some of the great grandchildren end up back in NYC in the early 1900s” “Well, last year I read a book about Louisa May Alcott and her mother, so this year I am reading a book about Lousia May and her father.” She thinks I read strange books. Wonder what she will think of the book I just bought about Eleanor of Acqutaine and the four kings.