Who am I?

Over the years, at least a thousand times, I've heard the term 'you are what you eat.' If I were to believe this to be true, a glance in the mirror would expose a cow with pigs feet, a chicken beak, fish for wings, onions sprouting from my back, pomegranates for eyes and a green bean mane. I don't see that. 

I must conclude that I am what I read. 

Looking back on my reading selections dating to early adolescence I find quite possibly my own personal escape from the realities of life that might have slain me years ago. 

I am entirely convinced that reading is an essential building block of coherence and survival. 

I'm also convinced that when one stops reading, one loses coherence and skates along the edge of ignorance. I am to this point today. I cannot read like I did in the past because the sponge that is my brain cannot absorb any more. I can only hope that I have sucked in enough information to sustain me in my new ignorance. 

You might be interested in what a guy like me liked to read. This is not intended to be a boastful narrative, but a simple compilation of the hunger my brain has sated through reading. If you find this a boring post, I offer no apologies because recalling these stories brings them to life once again. I guarantee this to be a very very incomplete telling. 

I started young, reading fairly well at 4 years old, though preferring mathematics at the time. In kindergarten, while the other kids were napping, I practiced addition and subtraction, even touching upon multiplication. I found Dick and Jane stories boring, realizing now that I was looking for more than practice to identify words. In first grade I wrote my first story, about a dinosaur, known in 1964 as a Brontosaurus. I wish I still had it. 

I jump ahead to fifth grade, when I read "Psycho Cybernetics" (the power of positive thinking). Within a year I somehow found a soft porn book called "Candy" and read it secretly, huddled with a flashlight under my sheets at night. I can still recall all the sexual innuendo. After that, I snuck into my mom's bedroom and found she was reading "Helter Skelter." Once I found out she was done with that paperback, I snuck it out of the room and read it, again, under the sheets, at night, with a flashlight. I found the Manson book to be far more intriguing than the horny chick in "Candy." 

My reading appetite was severely curtailed due to the fact I had no access to materials interesting to me until I was old enough to search them out. I went through a period of several years, having read only a few classics. When I was 14 I read the unabridged "Robinson Crusoe," the unabridged "Moby Dick," and most of Jules Verns' classics. The best of the bunch, at the time, was "Lord of the Flies." 

From here I jump around a lot. Often I find myself reading a work of historical fiction and then going on a rampage of discovery, consuming all the factual information I can and comparing it to the details contained within the fiction. Case in point: Caleb Carr's "The Alienist" and his "Angel of Darkness." Another case: "I, Claudius" concerning the early Roman Empire.  Yet another case: "The River God" by Wilbur Smith concerning early to mid Egyptian society. 

The best way not to run this post to infinity would be for me to more briefly list my obsessions. 

On horror fiction: I have read every Stephen King book in existence, many excellent, a few okay, some not so great and lately rehashed stories, likely because he's addressed every horror concept imaginable. Peter Straub stuff, the unequaled Edgar Alan Poe, crap like "Flowers in the Attic," a dozen authors not worth mentioning........

How about Voltaire? How about Nietsche, Aristotle, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo? How about Nostradamus?

I told you I would jump around, and I'm not lying.

I've read biographies out the yin-yang. John Adams, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Einstein and many more. 

For a couple years, thanks to my dad, Gus Errion, I delved into physics and quantum mechanics, reading Carl Sagan (billions and billions), Stephen Hawking ("A Brief History of Time" and everything else he has written), Brian Green ("Fabric of the Cosmos", "Elegant Universe"). I've studied Bjork, Hubble, Oppenheimer. I got into string theory before super string theory took over. I tried to read Einsteins Theory of General Relativity, doing okay until I reached the limitations of my mathematics education. I probably know more about physics and quantum science than the average idiot. 

About religion: I have read chunks of the Bible, concluding that it is a written filibuster, cloudying a simple message with volumes of unnecessary contradiction and confusion. I've read the Koran, easily understood; worded correctly, the Koran could be inserted into the Bible as a handful of chapters, either quoted or ignored. I've read the Book of Mormon, concluding that the religion needs to remove the second M in its title. If you don't believe me, read the book. After having had to suspend disbelief during my torturous journey through Revelations, I had no more suspension left when reading Smiths' fiction. Maybe if I had read the Book of Mormon before the Bible, I would have seen things in an opposite way. I read many accounts on Buddhism, Judaisms, Hinduism, Shintoism and other, more obscure concepts. Nothing really grabs me as individually significant. Rather than putting all my eggs in one basket, I prefer to keep my eggs for when I am hungry.

Other stuff that has formed my brain: I have read "Mein Kampf", the "Communist Manifesto". I have read "Mao." I have read the awesome and difficult Shirer work "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." I have read Ian Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Let it be known that reading all this stuff does not mean I agree with or accept any premises or concepts contained within these sometimes radical publications. 

I will lighten the load now. I've read, under duress, "Silas Marner," "The Great Gatsby" (excellent), "The Scarlet Letter"  and other school directed books. Later on I appreciated the oppression of my teachers. 

Best books? Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (Some of the best sentence structure ever.) Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," "The Road," (anything Cormac). Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago," Brahm Stoker's "Dracula."

I am very tired of talking, so I need to truncate this post and take a nap. Don't for a second believe this to be even half of my reading adventures. I haven't yet begun to explain who I am with this post.  To be concluded at a later date.

Oh hell, I got a second wind. 

How about Isaac Asimov? Ray Bradbury? Robert Heinlein? Orson Scott Card? 

How about "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series? How about "Sometimes a Great Notion"? 

How about I quit before Rachel passes out? Bye.