I have a brain full of junk. Often I wish I could remember things other than those I do. For example, when I was about five I was fluent in Spanish, a result of living in Puerto Rico. 15 years later when I lived in Arizona, did I remember any Spanish? I did not. I remember the street names and numbers of the houses on which we lived when I was growing up (and there were a few, since we moved about every 18 months). I even remember where I was when I read certain books.
My first exposure to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books was a paperback copy of “Gambit”. I was reading it in the back seat of my family’s 1965 Buick Special sometime in 1965 or 1966 while we were heading into or out of DC from/to our house in the Virginia suburbs.
I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” over three or four nights while working a swing shift at the Telecomm Center on Kwajalein in the mid-1970s. It was one of the four book selections I requested when I first signed up for the Book-of-the-Month Club.
When I overnighted at Tripler Army Hospital in November of last year after my second surgery I have vivid memories of reading a trade paperback copy of David Weber’s “Empire from the Ashes.”
Who has similar book memories?
In 1991 –“Startide Rising” by David Brin, picked up at a book exchange counter at one of the warungs along the main drag in Candidasa. Devoured it (along with heaps of gado gado and satay) during our week there. Forgotten when we left to tramp around the rest of Bali for a month and a half, returned, and the hotel owners had kept it for me! Still on my bookshelf her at home, a bit worse for wear.
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That’s a story worth retelling. Thanks!