Reminiscing on Reading -- This Is Not Meant For Those Looking To Read About the Bakken

I started an aggressive reading program in 2001, and started a blog to track that program. I believe I have "turned" that blog off, as a first step ....

I remember, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, we had the best library in the world, the James Memorial Library. I can remember to this day, as if it was yesterday, running into the children's section, so excited to be able to pick out my own book. I have no idea how my mother found time to take us to the library. She had at least four children then; I can't remember if #5 had come along yet. But the family had very little money. I don't know if we had a second car. I assume we did; how else would we have gotten to the library? It was just a bit too far to walk. But it was a great experience. I remember peeking around the corner from the children's section, dreaming about the day I would be allowed to go into the "adult" section of the library. From just around the corner I could see what are now called "stacks." I was amazed to see that there were so many books that one had to walk up steps to get to another level of books. Wow, it was daunting, but exciting. I remember the library but I don't remember, at all, the winters or how cold they were. Well, if I think hard, I can remember them. But I don't have to think hard about remembering James Memorial Library.

I can remember, also, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, four books or magazine articles that captured my attention:

In eighth grade it was two articles in National Geograhic, one on "honey ants" and the other on lasers. I remember taking them on vacation and reading them in the lower bunk bed in a very small room in my cousin's house. The same house that had a canary that my aunt let out to fly, to get exercise.

Somewhere between eighth grade and my sophomore year in high school it was a book on Stonehenge.

And in eighth grade, it was Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Oh, I guess there was another book. It was a biography of Albert Schweitzer.

Of all those, I would love to find a copy of the book I read on Stonehenge. I've looked for it at bookstores in Boston, discount bookstores in San Antonio, and at Powell's in Portland, Oregon, but have never run across it.

I was reminded of that book from a link on the Drudge Report today: "Pits Add to Stonehenge Mystery."

Today, on my desk is my traveling library for the moment:

• Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota, William C Sherman, Paul L. Whitney, and John Guerrero
• Plains Folk: North Dakota's Ethnic History, North Dakota Centennial Heritage Series
• In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey, Dan Aadland
• Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris
• Prairy Erth: A Deep Map, Wililam Least Heat-Moon (no misspellings)
• The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, Jeffrey Ostler
• The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, David Abulafia

I finished The Lakotas and the Black Hills a few days ago but will go back and re-read portions of it.

Least Heat-Moon's Prairie Erth has turned out to be the most surprising of all of them; Least Heat-Moon was not always a favorite of mine, but this one is very, very good. Surprising, considering the subject matter.

I am happy to say that I bought all of these books at Books on Broadway in Williston. I have bought two copies each of Plains Folk and Prairie Peddlers. My first copies are back home in San Antonio.