There are many things in my vast repetoir of experience. One that I am currently getting a lot of pleasure from is reading. I love reading!
Don't get me wrong; I do not read at a fast pace completing volumes per day and I can't say that I focus on any one particular author but I do enjoy a good book!
My beginnings
I started enjoying reading in my early teens - I think!
I remember spending much time reading during my high school years. While most of the other boys at school were fooling around frying ants under magnifying glasses, playing with electronics, pyrotechnics and seeing how girls worked, I was reading. I think it contributed to the slow development of social skills but it gave me a vast appreciation of fiction.
During these years I found that I could live inside the book I was reading. I could enjoy the experiences of the characters in the books. I could feel the sorrow and dissappointment they had as well. There were even times that I shed a tear or two in particularly moving passages.
Once again, you should not think of me as a softy who sought out love stories and that type of literature; no, I was more drawn to action and to books that moved well. Books that grasped my interest would result in me reading during every spare minute even 'sacrificing' school home work for reading.
At school, while the class was studying literature, I would be reading my books lost in the escapades of the fictional characters and whirled away in the adventures of heros and heroines! Sometimes the teacher would catch me out but that was rare. There was a row of us. We sat at the back of the class. We would have our novels inside our set school works and we would enjoy ourselves. Those lessons went quickly - all too quickly and really just resulted in an increased eagerness to find a place to continue the reading. Most of the other guys would be reading cowboy books like those by Louie La'Amor, J T Edson or others of the many western authors that were prevalent in the early seventies.
My interests at that time were more drawn to Arthur Haily, Douglas Reeman, and Wilbur Smith.
Wilbur Smith was a particularly exciting read. He wrote of Southern Africa and the type of things that were from the region and its cultures. I loved reading of the characters that were indiginous to the region and had fantastic capabilities of stamina. They would be able to run day and night, never stoping but intent on being reliable and getting their task done.
Wilbur Smith also introduced me to a darker side of the African Continent as he related stories of tribal healers, 'doctors' and witches. It was intensely interesting!
In some of his books, the savagery of the characters and the deep intensity of their acts thrilled me at the same time as bringing horror. Born with these descriptions were amazing dreams and fantasies that to this day provide a sense of wonder and entertainment.
Douglas Reeman produced incredible novels about the seas, the ships that sailed in them and the men and women that lived on board them. While reading his books it was possible to feel the excitement they had as they were engaged in action; the frustration and loneliness they were subject to in vast expanses of open water. The submarine crew member's fear and anticipation as they waited submerged beneath the deep dark waters became tangable to me even though I was curled up in my bed or on a lounge chair in the stiffling muggy heat of Durban on the Natal coast!
Reading is so much fun. It is satisfying, relaxing and stimulating at the same time.
More to follow soon!
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