Habitual Reader Profiles - Page 1

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	Name: Richard Cook
	City & State: Oakland, California
	Vocation / Avocation: Bookseller, Sunrise Bookshop
	Website Email: sunrisebooks@earthlink.net

Why I'm a Habitual Reader:

I discovered reading fairly early in life, but it was reading Don Quixote in my teens that convinced me that reading was going to be a lifetime activity. Prior to that book, reading had been sometimes interesting and amusing, but often a chore. With that book I found I was so totally immersed in the reality of the story and characters that the words disappeared and reading changed for me.

I seem now to alternate between reading non-fiction and fiction with long stretches in which I read predominantly in one field, then moving to another subject or genre. My favorite areas of fiction have been mystery novels, especially the P.I. novel, science fiction and fantasy, and fiction that features metaphysical issues. The Harry Potter novels, which I enjoy immensely, led me to read and re-read classic young-adult fantasy series by Ursula LeGuin (the Earthsea series), Susan Cooper (The Dark Is Rising series), Lloyd Alexander (Prydain Chronicles), Madeleine L Engle (The Wrinkle in Time series), and to rediscover the fantasy novels of George MacDonald, and there is much more to come.

However, I am now taking a break from that genre and am revisiting another favorite area - literature of the Middle Ages.

My List of Ten: Ten Favorite Metaphysical Novels

1. Initiation
Author: Elisabeth Haich

2. Om the Secret of Ahbor Valley
Author: Talbot Mundy

3. Sea Priestess
Author: Dion Fortune

4. Zanoni
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

5. Winged Pharoah
Author: Joan Grant

6. The Place of the Lion
Author: Charles Williams

7. The House of Fulfillment
Author: L. Adams Beck

8. Magister Ludi
Author: Herman Hesse

9. The Life Everlasting
Author: Marie Corelli

10. The Space Trilogy
Author: C. S. Lewis

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

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