Books
If there’s one thing about me that has remained constant over the years, it’s the fact that I am – unequivocally – a bookworm. By “bookworm,” I don’t mean that I like to read the occasional book. I mean that I am almost always reading a book, whether for fun or for school. One of my bosses once told me he was jealous of the fact that I have a new book to read every week.
In first grade, I was always volunteering to read the directions aloud, to the point where none of my other classmates would bother raising their hands because they knew that Heather would read it, anyway. . . even if the teacher called on someone else. When we sat at our reading table, I was so bored that I kept flipping open my Ninja Turtles Michelangelo watch to announce the time to everyone. A couple days later, my teacher held me back from recess to ask if I would be interested in going to the second grade for reading because I was obviously ahead of everyone else (and, as she told my parents, I was preventing everyone else from learning how to read). In second grade, I had to go to third grade for reading, partially because I had already read the material.
My favorite books were both The Boxcar Children and The Babysitter’s Club series, but I also enjoyed Matt Christopher’s sports books and biographies about people like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. The truth is though, I would read anything I could get my hands on, even if it wasn’t age-appropriate. In fact, I used to read two or three books at a time – literally: I would sit on my bed with my books and read one or two pages from each one. Eventually, I figured out that it was faster and better to read one at a time. Because I was reading them so fast, though, my dad made me do book reports for a couple of months to make sure that I understood what I was reading. I was so upset about this that I left my bookmark in the last three pages of the final Boxcar Children book and finished it secretly, just so I wouldn’t have to do another stupid report.
We moved for the first time shortly before I turned 18, and that’s when my mom dropped the bombshell: she flat-out refused to move with all my books. By “all my books” I mean that I probably had about 20-30 boxes of books in the garage that were full-to-bursting . . . in addition to whatever books I had inside the house. I went through every box and every book; I kept some and gave others to mom’s friends; we ended up donating the majority to the library of my former elementary school.
The following is a partial list of some of my favorite books. The only positions that really matter are the first two; everything is else is mostly arbitrary. My Virtual Bookshelf on Facebook probably has more books, but adding books is pretty tedious so even that is only a very short list.
Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
Shibumi by Trevanian
The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Wait ‘Til Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
The Woman Who Can’t Forget by Jill Price
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Raising Abel by W. Michael Gear
Tietam Brown by Mick Foley
I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up by Jesse Ventura
Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families by Pamela Paul
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
My Life by President Bill Clinton
I have also read (and enjoyed!) classics like The Adventures of Tom and Huck, Dracula, White Fang, The Three Musketeers and many Shakespearean plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
