The last "Sopranos" episode of the season has aired, people have planned their vacations and a great deal of us are facing long, hot days on the beach. For many of us, it’s time to catch up on our neglected pile of books — the ones we’ve been too busy to read.
I cannot think of anything more powerful than the written word. Books can intrigue us, move us, keep us on the edge of our seats, and fill us with hope. Some of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had came from reading. The beauty of books is that we get to put our own imaginative spin on what we read. That’s why reading is such a personal and meaningful experience.
I’m no authority on books. I’ve spent my last 15 years writing one and the last few months getting it copyrighted, but I have no official title. Kurt Vonnegut says, "Advice is a form of nostalgia." Well, so are my recommendations.
For seventh- and eighth-graders, I recommend Ray Bradbury’s coming-of-age masterpiece "Dandelion Wine." It is a beautifully told story of life in a small town. Bradbury based some of it on his childhood in Illinois. In each chapter you come to know the many townspeople and truly cherish life in a small town. This book was a summer reading assignment given to me when I was in St. Dominic’s. I’ve never forgotten it.
For high schoolers, I recommend James Hilton’s "Lost Horizon," Willa Cather’s "My Antonia" and John Steinbeck’s "The Pearl." These were also summer reading assignments, and I chose to embrace them rather than cheat myself with the Cliffs Notes.
As I got older and did my own exploring, I continued to discover how amazing words are. Herman Hesse’s "Siddhartha" and Joseph Campbell’s "The Power of Myth" are quite meaningful experiences. The views expressed in these books are thought provoking and raise many questions about our lives. When you finish each one, you are truly changed forever.
My favorite book of all time is called "Replay." Ken Grimwood has not only written a book that hits on a lot of our fantasies and feelings about time, but he’s written a book about the many facets of ourselves. It’s a book about man’s need for wealth, power, meaning, love, lust, excess, creativity, and imagination. It’s about a man who learns to nurture the great potential within himself and goes through life without the fears that hold him back. Ultimately, it’s about the preciousness of life and how we should appreciate and make the most of our time.
Jeff Winston is the main character, and the story starts as he has a fatal heart attack and wakes up 25 years earlier in college. He wakes up with the renewed strength and vitality of youth and something even better — the knowledge of the next 25 years. I was delighted by this fun, nostalgic and very thought-provoking book. It took me through time on an adventure of amazing personal depth and left me contemplating and speculating dreamily on its many universal themes.
Great books are like that. They can be appreciated and speculated upon for years. They can be read and reread, carrying a new meaning each time.
Darren DeBari
Brick