Habitual Reader Profiles - Page 1

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	Name: Charlotte Cook
	City & State: Oakland, California
	Vocation / Avocation:Publisher, KOMENAR Publishing
	Website: www.komenarpublishing.com

Why I'm a Habitual Reader:

I have never hidden in a book. Instead I’ve had a kind of science-fiction experience of discovery. Stepping into new worlds. Parallel universes. Places where whole different worlds exist with amazing people who breathe foreign air, live unique lives, explore other possibilities than I might choose. When I was learning to teach, someone said to me that a teacher “extends and enhances (a student’s) experience and knowledge.” Isn’t that the same thing with a great novel? Isn’t it true that fiction tells the truth while nonfiction can only seek it?

I want to find a casual answer, a humorous reply to “why fiction?” But I can’t. Instead my brain follows a line through all the people I’ve met in a book (Elizabeth Bentley, Judge Dee, Rat and Mole, Jane Eyre, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, Scout and Atticus Finch, and Atticus Cody) and all the places I’ve been (Tara, Pemberly, Toad Hall, ancient Hawaii, modern Edinburough, a house on Mango Street, a village in China, and the ski slopes of Jackson Hole) as well as different times and eras and historical events. Then a warmth fills my body and my fingers reach for the novel on my bedside table, the paperback in my purse, a manuscript on my desk, or the short story anthology tucked in the trunk of my car for emergencies.

My List of Ten: Works of Fiction I Will Read Again

1. Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
“Miss Bingley’s congratulations to her brother on his approaching marriage were all that was affectionate and insincere.”

2. Straight
Author: Dick Francis
“He was 30, looked 40 and lived with his mother.”

3. Atticus
Author: Ron Hansen
“Weeds and sage were yellow against the snow and snow strayed over the geography as though recalling how it was to be water.”

4. Final Payments
Author: Mary Gordon
“They argued about baptism of desire, knocking dishes of pickles onto the floor.”

5. Underground Man
Author: Ross Macdonald
“The memory, or the fantasy, shuddered through him. His scarred mouth smiled, leaving his eyes still sad.”

6. Dance Hall of the Dead
Author: Tony Hillerman
“Shulawitsi, the Little Fire God, member of the Council of the Gods and Deputy to the Sun, had taped his track shoes to his feet.”

7. Ransom of Red Chief
Author: O. Henry
“It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, ‘during a moment of temporary mental apparition;’ but we didn't find that out till later.”

8. The Wind in the Willows
Author: Kenneth Graham
“Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them.”

9. To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
“Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

10. Why I Live at the P.O.
Author: Eudora Welty
“He’s Mama’s only brother and is a good case of a one-track mind. Ask anybody. A certified pharmacist.”

Have you read any of these titles? Review one now.

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