Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Carnival of Genealogy Reading

Well I do come from a family of readers, my dad and his family gave each other books for presents for birthdays, Christmas, etc. The books ranged from Zane Gray to Mark Twain and to non fiction, history and travel books of all kinds. When I was young they had a wall of bookcases all filled with books, and if you opened any of them they would say to mom or pop or one of the kids from whoever had given the book. After pops parents died he asked for one of the three bookcases they had, and it is sitting right across the room from me now as a remembrance of my grandparents. Moms family did read, but all I remember was magazines and newspapers. Grandma had her Betty Crocker cookbook which I now have and she also collected recipes from all her friends at church, I have a big sack full of those recipes. Mom did read a lot of magazines and she also had a Betty Crocker cookbook a lot newer than her mom did, and I have that also. Grandma was the one person that read the bible regularly, as our family was not real religious nor was pops family. My dad loved to read, and he read almost everything he could get his hands on when I remember him. When he was young he had a lot of problems reading, he got real bad headaches when he read for very long and it was years before they found out he needed glasses, he was very farsighted, could see for miles (and read the eye chart easily), but close up was real bad and that is what caused his headaches. For a person that never finished high school he read so much I think he might have been able to graduate from college. He did read the newspaper every day and magazines of all types. One of the suggestions was did we have comic books as a child, yes we did, and there is a funny story about that also. When my sister was real young mom and pop went on a trip and they bought several comic books for my sister, she would look at the pictures on the page and then tear out the page and throw it out the window of the car. I was an early learner and read a lot of books, but my tastes were mainly non fiction, I never really liked fiction much, seemed like it was easy to figure out the ending. I have not read many books lately, do browse a lot of genealogy books, and I do read a lot of magazines and of course the newspaper every day

4 comments:

  1. There's most definitely a history of reading in your family, Charles! How very fortunate you are to have one of your grandparent's bookshelves. And what lovely memories looking at it must bring you. Thanks for sharing and contributing to the COG!

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  2. Lovely post. Looks like reading's in your blood.

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  3. I have found the same thing - I read a lot of blogs and online information but I have really cut down on my offline reading. I am making myself read in the evenings and i do enjoy it. It's just so easy and interesting to go from one thing to another on the computer!

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  4. Tearing out the pages to a comic book! Wowsa, that would send my comic book collecting grandson right out of his mind! What I wish is that I had more time to read all of the blogs in which I'm interested. Thanks for sharing your readers history.

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