I love books. I have hundreds of them back in Alabama, but I was never able to bring all of my books to Vermont. I used to devour several books a week, but my headaches make it harder for me to concentrate on reading, so I often just listen to audiobooks. It looks like this guy is getting ready to travel somewhere since he’s reaching for a suitcase. The great thing about books is that you can travel through the written word to far flung places. Books can take you to the most wonderful cities, the most remote places on earth, or even into space.
I began my life in the South and for five years lived as a closeted teacher, but am now making a new life for myself as an oral historian in New England. I think my life will work out the way it was always meant to be. That doesn't mean there won't be ups and downs; that's all part of life. It means I just have to be patient. I feel like October 7, 2015 is my new birthday. It's a beginning filled with great hope. It's a second chance to live my life…not anyone else's.
My profile picture is "David and Me," 2001 painting by artist Steve Walker. It happens to be one of my favorite modern gay art pieces.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 11th, 2021 at 6:00 am and posted in Moment of Zen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
How did you manage to sneak into my library and catch me unawares? I wish my body looked that good as I stretching to pull a book off the top shelf. My personal library includes 4,718 catalogued books (using Librarything.com) and an addition 30 boxes or so that haven’t been unpacked and catalogued. But then, I was a literature major, after all. And I’m often naked when I’m in my library, being the card-carrying nudist I am. (I leave it to your imagination to figure out where a nudist carries his cards.)
Oh honey, my books are all over the place. As far as subject matter goes. I have a fair amount of gay myteries–some of which I’ve written about on my blog, and most of my collection fits under the topic “Fiction,” but there’s everything from Anthropology to Zonpower–whatever that is. I just love books, and have been collecting them since my mother enrolled me in the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club back in the mid 1950s–and I still have most of those books. Care to read Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine? I have it.
Funny story. My high school classmates were mostly upper middle class, and the fathers (we’re talking mid 60s) were either professors at Cal Berkeley or high up in Standard Oil/California, or Bank of America, etc. Our Jr. High was segregated into 27 tracks, based supposedly on ability, and I, not meaning to brag, was in the top track. I mention that only because our 9th grade English teacher gave us the assignment to go home and catalog by title and author every book in the house. I went back the next day and asked if she wanted to include my father’s professional library which he kept in his office at the church. I told her that without going there, I had a list of over 500 books. Her mouth dropped open. “I was expecting ten or tweve,” she told me. Really what was this woman doing teaching a class of high achieving upper middle class kids?
My love of books come from my parents. My father mostly read westerns and books about prehistoric humans, such as those by Jean Auel. My mother preferred historical suspense, particularly books my Jack Higgins.
Each summer, when not in school, I’d devour as many books as possible. One summer I read everything by Sydney Sheldon another summer it was Steve Martini. Not the most intellectual but I still learned a lot. If there was something I did not understand, I looked it up. I’ve always been that way. I learn something from even the trashiest fiction.
I think it drove my father crazy that I read all the time. We’d go fishing, and while I like fishing, I preferred reading. I always took a book with us. I always had a book in my hand, even when everyone else had a Gameboy in their hand.
One of my cousins used to give all of us a book each Christmas. It was always an anticipated present, and one I always treasured.
My Father was not a reader. He had a large professional library, much of which I donated to his last parish and they set up a church library in his name. I kept a great number of his books, however, and I’m not really sure why. And I had the same experience. He loved to fish. I loved to read. He’d take me out, and I’d sit on the shore reading. He never understood that, but I came to understand that I was not the son my Father wanted.
My Mother, on the other hand, was a voracious reader, and had a large library of her own–all of which I’ve kept. A product of the Depression, my Mother would question every cent I spent–unless it was to buy books or music. As a result, I have a large collection not just of books, but also of music, over 1,000 LPs, almost as many CDS, and sheet music for piano, organ, guitar, and trombone. What can I say, I collect stuff.
It’s fascinating to read of your love of books and reading. I loved to read as a child and I want to get back to that. During the meantime I’m admiring the guy’s ass and fantasizing about sucking his dick.
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Joe
The Closet Professor 
December 11th, 2021 at 8:15 am
How did you manage to sneak into my library and catch me unawares? I wish my body looked that good as I stretching to pull a book off the top shelf. My personal library includes 4,718 catalogued books (using Librarything.com) and an addition 30 boxes or so that haven’t been unpacked and catalogued. But then, I was a literature major, after all. And I’m often naked when I’m in my library, being the card-carrying nudist I am. (I leave it to your imagination to figure out where a nudist carries his cards.)
December 11th, 2021 at 8:27 am
LOL, all of my books are either gay fiction or history with a few mysteries scattered in.
December 11th, 2021 at 8:38 am
Oh honey, my books are all over the place. As far as subject matter goes. I have a fair amount of gay myteries–some of which I’ve written about on my blog, and most of my collection fits under the topic “Fiction,” but there’s everything from Anthropology to Zonpower–whatever that is. I just love books, and have been collecting them since my mother enrolled me in the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club back in the mid 1950s–and I still have most of those books. Care to read Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine? I have it.
Funny story. My high school classmates were mostly upper middle class, and the fathers (we’re talking mid 60s) were either professors at Cal Berkeley or high up in Standard Oil/California, or Bank of America, etc. Our Jr. High was segregated into 27 tracks, based supposedly on ability, and I, not meaning to brag, was in the top track. I mention that only because our 9th grade English teacher gave us the assignment to go home and catalog by title and author every book in the house. I went back the next day and asked if she wanted to include my father’s professional library which he kept in his office at the church. I told her that without going there, I had a list of over 500 books. Her mouth dropped open. “I was expecting ten or tweve,” she told me. Really what was this woman doing teaching a class of high achieving upper middle class kids?
December 11th, 2021 at 9:09 am
My love of books come from my parents. My father mostly read westerns and books about prehistoric humans, such as those by Jean Auel. My mother preferred historical suspense, particularly books my Jack Higgins.
Each summer, when not in school, I’d devour as many books as possible. One summer I read everything by Sydney Sheldon another summer it was Steve Martini. Not the most intellectual but I still learned a lot. If there was something I did not understand, I looked it up. I’ve always been that way. I learn something from even the trashiest fiction.
I think it drove my father crazy that I read all the time. We’d go fishing, and while I like fishing, I preferred reading. I always took a book with us. I always had a book in my hand, even when everyone else had a Gameboy in their hand.
One of my cousins used to give all of us a book each Christmas. It was always an anticipated present, and one I always treasured.
December 11th, 2021 at 10:06 am
My Father was not a reader. He had a large professional library, much of which I donated to his last parish and they set up a church library in his name. I kept a great number of his books, however, and I’m not really sure why. And I had the same experience. He loved to fish. I loved to read. He’d take me out, and I’d sit on the shore reading. He never understood that, but I came to understand that I was not the son my Father wanted.
My Mother, on the other hand, was a voracious reader, and had a large library of her own–all of which I’ve kept. A product of the Depression, my Mother would question every cent I spent–unless it was to buy books or music. As a result, I have a large collection not just of books, but also of music, over 1,000 LPs, almost as many CDS, and sheet music for piano, organ, guitar, and trombone. What can I say, I collect stuff.
December 12th, 2021 at 3:01 am
It’s fascinating to read of your love of books and reading. I loved to read as a child and I want to get back to that. During the meantime I’m admiring the guy’s ass and fantasizing about sucking his dick.