What Am I Reading?

I've been getting back into fantasy novels again. I started with an old favorite, J.R.R. Tolkien's first book in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (1954).









And now I'm finally reading that supposed modern classic from Terry Brooks, THE SWORD OF SHANNARA.
















Which quite frankly I'm not that impressed with. I'm about halfway through it and all I get so far is that Brooks ripped off Tolkien and his writing in the year this was published (1977) was not all that great. It stumbles. A lot.
I'm about ready to put it aside and get into either Robert Jordan's THE EYE OF THE WORLD (1990), the first book in his awesome THE WHEEL OF TIME series or George R.R. Martin's excellent first book in his A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE saga, A GAME OF THRONES (1996), or maybe I'll just jump back into Tolkien's trilogy and re-read THE TWO TOWERS (1954)








































But, of course, if anyone has any suggestions for fantasy series I should be reading, please let me know here, or email me at Nickolasecook@aol.com or Nickolasecook1313@gmail.com and let me know.

--Nickolas Cook

What Am I Reading?

I'm in the middle of reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1939, THE YEARLING, winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize in fiction—and deservedly so. Believe it or not, I’ve never read it before, but having grown up in Florida, it was one of those books you heard about all the time because the story takes place in Gainesville, right down the road from where I grew up. Having grown up in a pretty poor rural environment, below the middle class mark, in the 70s and 80s it’s been easy to identify with the young protagonist, Jody, as he comes of age with his father, Penny Baxter, and his mother, Ory, in the middle of the scrub brush wilderness of Florida’s outback. It’s truly a beautifully written tale, full of imagery that sticks with you. Or maybe it sticks with me because it’s the sort of natural beauty I grew up around. Cookville was very much like Baxter Island, surrounded by hunger and desperation for life. Some of the harsh lessons Jody must learn about the mythical adults in his life are the very same lessons I had to also learn in some rather cruel ways.
The forest in the book is like another character in the cast, much like how I viewed the woods that surrounded our home. We lived in a ratty old single wide trailer in the middle of all these towering pines and oaks. Animals were everywhere. Wild cats, like panthers and bobcats, roamed the woods in the night. There were even a few bear still loose in the forest, but they eventually moved deeper into the woods as more and more people began to move into the area. There were deer, possums, skunks, armadillos; there were more dangerous animals around as well. Rattlers, poisonous spiders and frogs; nasty tempered wasps and bees. When I was a kid, the very air was alive with sounds, night and day. It was when the forest went quiet that we all knew to look out for the Kittywampus.
But that's another story for another time...





















Down back of our home, there was a small creek. It ran for quite a ways through the woods, a couple of miles or so, until it joined the larger creek. That water ran straight on into the St. Johns River, one of the few rivers in Florida to run North.
It seems to me that there was never a day that we didn't see the river. It was so deeply entrenched in our lives. My daddy, his daddy before him, and his daddy before him as well, all made their living for a time on that river out back of our home.
We had many winter days when the fires burned high, redolent pine smoke spiraled into the into the crisp blue air, and in a pot over the flames cooked blue crab, shrimp, smoked mullet and squirrel. Sometimes there was venison to be had. Occasionally, there was wild duck or pheasant. And there were many times that, if we hadn't had the land to live off of, we would not have eaten at all.
Hard times seemed to be everywhere I looked as a child. Most of my daddy's family lived around us within a half mile or less. They weren't much better off than us. Some of them were much worse. The 70s weren't easy on a lot of people in that area. There was a lot of poor people in my life. I took it for granted that anyone I knew was as poor as we were.




















But growing up in a home where I wasn't handed everything when I wanted it made me a better person. I learned the value of working for what you wanted. I've seen firsthand what happens when kids are given all they want without having to work for it; I'm glad I was poor. It gave me a greater appreciation for a dollar.
I'm almost done with this great read, and I’m sure to return to it again and again, now that I’ve been lucky enough to discover it.

--Nickolas Cook

What Am I Reading?

The Thorn Birds (1977)
By Colleen McCollough

I’ve had the book for years, since picking it up in one of my usual HUGE bundles of used books at our local used bookstore giant, Bookmans. If you live in Tucson or Phoenix, Bookmans is like an institution for book lovers.
They actually carry more then books—a whole lot more.
Games, video games, comics, CDs, LPs, cassette tapes, sheet music, art books, art, antique furniture, musical instruments…pretty much, you name it, and they carry it. It’s a great system old Bob Bookman created way back in the 80s. He takes in people’s used items and gives them cash money or store credit for it. I used to work there; it was a dirty job, but one that had some great benefits for someone who loves books and music. I never had much of a paycheck because I spent most of the extremely small check on merchandise. At the time I worked for them, Bookmans knew the kind of people who would be willing to work for such a pittance. No one complained about the tiny paychecks because it was like having a direct pipeline into coolness of the first degree. You wouldn’t believe the things I got a chance to see working there. One of the most memorable was:
Amazing Fantasy #15






















I held it in my hand. For a comic fan, this was like holding the Holy Grail.

Anyway, I’m about 200 pages into this modern classic of love and danger in turn of the century Australia. A great period piece, but also a very strong character novel, filled with some rather risqué subject matter, such as incest, loss of faith and adultery. Sounds more like a bodice ripper, right? Well, maybe some would see it as such, if it weren’t for her solid storytelling style.
I have several of McCollough’s novels, including TIM (1974) and a few of her MAN OF ROME series, all of which are somewhere in my thousands of books in my insane TBR pile.
One of the things author Colleen McCollough is well known for in her books is the extensive research and historical accuracy.
So far, I’ve whizzed right through the previous 200 pages mainly because McCollough builds some sympathetic and true to life people for her story. It’s easy to fall in love with a story with strong, true to life characters. If the book continues at this pace, I’ll probably list this as one of my favorite reads of 2010.

--Nickolas Cook

What Am I Reading?

Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
by John Steinbeck

I'm just about finished with this one. First time I read this was back in my early twenties, while working in a little local bookstore, The Book Loft












in my hometown of Fernandina Beach, Florida.

At the time, it sparked in me such a strong yearning to see America that it was almost like a sickness, a mania, a fever. But I was young, and as much as I wanted to 'escape' my childhood town-cum-prison, I was, in many ways, still a scared kid. I was in a disintegrating relationship with a young woman who was more like a woman-child than a mature person, and I was also very much financially dependent on that bookstore job. That was the year I bought my first new car, and so I was making car payments, and had had to move back in with my parents for a time after living with my best friend from grade school-to-high school, Curt Courtenay. Our childhood friendship was falling into shambles as well; we'd outgrown one another in so many ways, but the biggest problem was that Curt was moving on, going to Florida Institute of Technology, and I was...well, I was too scared to move on with my life. I had convinced myself that I belonged in Fernandina Beach for the rest of my life.
Then I picked up Travels with Charley and Steinbeck's brutally honest and sometimes confused and frightened travelogue of his cross country journey with his aged poodle, Charley, lit a fire in my belly, a burning need to see the country of my birth.
Thanks to his book, I discovered what I knew deep down, even then. It was only a matter of time before I began to push against the boundaries of my home, a demarcation reinforced in too many ways by a fear of the unknown of what was out there, in that great, wide world, waiting for me.
Well, it took me a few more years before I finally 'escaped' Fernandina Beach; I made it eventually to Orlando, Florida. It was with a different woman in my life by then, one that would become my first wife, and between the inevitable attrition of years and the equally inevitable neglect on all our parts, I had lost most of my childhood friends at that point.
Now, here I am, forty years old, and I find that that fever, that mania, has never really died.
Of course, it's been tempered with a bit more maturity (one would hope) and whole lot less fear of what that great, wide world has waiting for me. I find that I still yearn to see that world--bedamned the dangers!
Over the intervening years, I have been lucky enough to see most of the states in our union; some in passing, some I've been able to settle in for a little bit to taste the air and feel the dirt between my toes, so to speak. During that time I've found that Steinbeck's natural dichotomy of fear of, and love for, his countrymen is something that has also come natural to me.
Back in '62 Steinbeck was seeing the great sweeping changes of the Civil Rights movement in the South coming to something like fruition, and unknowingly he stood at the cusp of that 'beautiful wave' which Hunter S. Thompson reminisces upon in his classic 60s examination, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS.
Many years have slipped away since Steinbeck went out to re-discover his America. But what he found, and speaks to in his book, is something in which we modern Americans can, and should, still find some solace and wisdom.
After reading this book, I've got that fever again. It's time to maybe gather together Kim, and our own little pug crew, time to plan for our own re-discovery of that great, wide world.

--Nickolas Cook