Reasons To Read: Advice From a Best Selling Author

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Al Roker, Alex Cross, blogging, Blogs, Children's Books, James Patterson, Lost in a Drunken Banquet of Static, Reasons to Read, Tim L O'Brien, Tim O'Brien, Today Show, www.readkiddoread.com

“It’s our job to find books for our kids to read.  It’s not the school’s.” – Best Selling Author James Patterson

Welcome to the third installment of Reasons to Read.  In the first two weeks, we discussed Getting in Touch With Your Inner Casting Director and Reasons to Read – Time Travel, Bad Tv & Sex Tapes.

I love to read.  My parents taught me at an early age the joys of reading.  My two oldest children love to read, and it is just as important for me to show my two youngest children the joys of opening a terrific book and letting the writer take you on a journey, and into a world, that before now, you were unable to enter.

Unfortunately, many, many parents don’t spend that quality time with their children.

This past Wednesday I happened to walk past the television while the Today Show was on.  Al Roker was interviewing best-selling author James Patterson when the topic changed from promoting his latest Alex Cross novel to a cause Patterson has championed – getting children to read.

“We know we are supposed to teach the child how to ride a bike, or how to throw a baseball, but we don’t think, we have to go out and find books for them.”

Wow!  Right there on national television a mega-selling author stated it best.

Why do we as parents think it is the public schools system to teach our children?  Why is the most significant responsibility of parenting – the teaching of our children – delegated to someone else?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my children’s future determined by how well they are taught by someone else.  Nothing against teachers – my Mom was one.

We spend time teaching our kids to ride bikes, roller-skate, throw baseball’s and footballs, yet it escapes our thinking that perhaps we should spend just as much time at the library or bookstore picking out notable books for them to read.  We spend time picking out video games for our children.  For the cost of one video came we could buy four or five books instead.

My youngest daughter loves to read.  My son, well, not so much.  I have struggled to come up books that he might find appealing.  Books, other than Diary of a Wimpy Kid, are hard to find, and hold his interest.

Watching the interview with Patterson led me to a startling revelation.  Seems that while not writing the next best-seller, Patterson has started a website specifically designed to solve this problem.

I quickly went to the web site:  http://www.readkiddoread.com

On the home page, it states, “Something told you the only way to get kids to read was to give them great books, cool books, books they would absolutely, positively love.  I believe we have gathered the crème de la crème of such reading right here.  These are very special books that kids will gobble up and ask for more.  If your kids get a few of these books under their belts they’ll be well on their way to becoming readers for life.  I promise you.”

Reading lists are broken up into four categories:

0-8  Great Illustrated Books          6 & Up  Great Transitional Books          8 & Up  Great Pageturners          10 & Up  Great Advanced Reads

Within each category are four subcategories broken down into genres and more defined age groups with each category containing at least twenty-five books titles.

I spent quite a bit of time at the web site, scanning over book tiles and descriptions.  You could get lost in time.  My prayers were answered.  I have an entire arsenal of books to expose to my children.  I even see numerous options that might, just might, turn my son into a reader.

If you are a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or mentor to a child, check out the web site.  Let others in your circle of friends know about it.

After all, it is our job, and not the schools system, to teach our children well.

Reasons to Read – Time Travel, Bad TV & Sex Tapes

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America's Next Top Model, American Idol, Bad TV, Bad TV & Sex Tapes, Berlin, blogging, Blogs, Bonanza, Cold War, Come Monday, Cormac McCarthy, CSI, D.D. Warren, Dancing with the Stars, Gorky Park, Harry Potter, Jack Kerouac, James Rollins, Jersey Shore, John Le Carre, Kim Kardashian, Larry McMurtry, Lisa Gardner, Lonesome Dove, Lost in a Drunken Banquet of Static, Love You More, Martin Cruz Smith, Moscow, On the Road, Reasons to Read, Reasons to Read - Time Travel, SE HInton, Shakespeare, Soviet Union, Survivor, Suzanne Collins, Texas Rangers, The Biggest Loser, The Devil Colony, The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, The Outsiders, The Road, The Things They Carried, TheSpy Who Came in From the Cold, Tim L O'Brien, Tim O'Brien, Twilight series, writer, X Factor

Have I ever told you my tale of riding with two former Texas Rangers in the late 19th century?  I rode along with them on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.

Have I told you about the time I was a British Agent in Cold War Berlin?  Or traveled to Moscow before the collapse of the Soviet Union and found three corpses frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing?  If I failed to mention these exploits, I probably failed to mention that I served in Vietnam and walked with a father and son in the post-apocalyptic future.

I don’t have any sort of super powers over the universe.  I have no extraordinary abilities, but yet, I am able to travel in time and go places that others can only dream of.  The cost of my adventures?  Next to nothing!  I have traveled the world over ten times for what most of us pay for cable television each month.

Before you say I am full of more sh*t than a Christmas turkey, or place the call to have me committed, remember we all have the ability to visit far away places of intrigue, adventure and romance.

Sadly, most of us never will.

In last weeks post “Reasons to Read – Getting in Touch With Your Inner Casting Director I mentioned that one-third of high school graduates never read another book, and 42% of college graduates will never read another book after college. The numbers are shocking!

Of course, I have never been on a cattle drive with two Texas Rangers.  But, I have read Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.  I have never been to Berlin or Moscow, but I have read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre and Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park.  I never served in the military, but traveled with Tim O’Brien as I read his outstanding book The Things They Carried.  I can’t predict the next hour, much less travel into the future, but Cormac McCarthy’s The Road took me there.                             

So why don’t more people read?

Was it the classics we were forced to read in high school, that at the time, seemed like the driest, dullest stories in the world?  If our teachers hadn’t forced Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby upon us, but instead choose Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or even SE Hinton’s The Outsiders, would more people read today?  Maybe with the popularity of the Harry Potter novels and the Twilight series the reading numbers will improve.  It is hard to deny the book marketing directed towards today’s youth.  I don’t recall my generation or generations thereafter being targeted with anything as popular and mass appealing as we are seeing today.

People don’t read because they would rather be entertained by the television.  They would rather sit back on the couch and watch Dancing with the Stars.  This is a show where I haven’t even heard of the so-called stars.  Watch dancing?  Are you serious?  I was forced to take ballroom dancing in 8th grade with “Mr. Al.”  Hated it then and don’t watch it now.

Do I really need to know or care about which rather large person can lose the most weight on The Biggest Loser?  Am I supposed to be entertained by a network show that concludes with obese people standing on a weight scale?

I don’t get the X Factor, Survivor, American Idol or America’s Next Top Model.  Don’t even get me started with Jersey Shore.  Someone please, give me one, just one, valid reason to watch such numbingly bad television.  I don’t even understand the popularity of CSI, the show that is as fake as the backdrops were on Bonanza.

What about the greatest sham pulled on the American public this year?  How many millions and millions of misguided fools watched and continue to follow the Kim Kardashian marriage saga?  Why am I supposed to be enthralled about the life of a wanna-be celebrity?  A woman made famous by a sex tape, gets married and 72 days later wants a divorce.  What a joke, and the punch line is on the ever-caring public as she laughs all the way to the bank.

Turn it off.  Tune it out.

Instead, take a trip to the not to distant future with Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games or help D.D. Warren solve the case in Lisa Gardner’s Love You More.  

I’m not taking calls right now I’m on another journey, this time with James Rollins in The Devil Colony.

Come Monday:  Here at Lost in a Drunken Banquet of Static we celebrate the survival of another weekend!  And if it’s Monday, it’s time to start reading a new book.  On this day, we will go to the bookstore, the digital library and even dust off a few books on the bookshelf.  We will not only explore reasons to read, but also discuss other topics including book v. the movie.  Together we will also revisit some classics and look at how they are holding up with time, discuss our favorites, etc.

Remember if you are enjoying yourself here at my blog site you can easily subscribe to this blog and have each post delivered to your email address.  It’s kind of like a free Christmas present delivered to your box three days a week.  It’s almost as enjoyable as finding just one more beer hidden in the back of the refrigerator when you thought you were all out.  Just click the subscribe icon at the top right of this page and the gifts will keep on coming!

Reasons to Read – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Casting Director

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Angels & Demons, Anthony Hopkins, blogging, Blogs, Casting Director, Charles Portis, Clarice Starling, Da Vinci Code, Daniel Craig, Dennis Lehane, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Gus, Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter, Jack Reacher, Jeff Bridges, John Wayne, Larry McMurtry, Lee Child, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lisabeth Salander, Lonesome Dove, Lost in a Drunken Banquet of Static, Matt Damon, Matthew McConoughey, Michael Connolly, Mikael Blomkvist, One Shot, Reasons to Read, Robert Duvall, Robert Langdon, Robert Lundlum, Rooney Mara, Rooster Cogburn, Shelter Island, Silence of the Lambs, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Static in the Airwaves, Stieg Larson, Teddy Daniels, The Bourne Identity, The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo, The Lincoln Lawyer, Thomas Harris, Tim L O'Brien, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones, True Grit, Woodrow

Recently a small but certainly loud uproar circulated throughout the internet over the news that Tom Cruise had been cast to star as Jack Reacher, the former US Army cop, in mega-popular author Lee Childs novel One Shot.

The best-selling thriller series has sold more than 50 million copies and apparently the loyal readers did not approve of Cruise, a full ten inches shorter than Reacher, who is described in the novels as being six-foot, five-inches tall and weighs 250 pounds.  They charged that Cruise was too short and good-looking to play the menacing character.

One fan went as far to criticize the author, “He is clearly out of touch with his reading public.  I am seriously thinking that my Child-reading days are over.”

Extreme?  Certainly.  Sitting in the casting chair as we read our favorite novels can make us that way.

Great authors can make a character feel like part of our family.  We fall in love with them.  We feel their pain and rejoice in their triumphs.

It brings up an important and rarely discussed point.  One of the joys of reading is also to play the part of casting director.  Readers are loyal to their favorite authors.  We read each new release in a series and follow along with intense enthusiasm.

When I read a novel, at some point along the journey, I will stop and picture certain actors playing the roles in the book.  I become the casting director, and in my own little world, my imagination gets to pick and choose who I believe is perfect for the part.

I have always cheered when a book I’ve read, or an author I have long followed, starts to get national recognition.

When Hollywood announced plans to adapt Michael Connolly’s novel The Lincoln Lawyer to the big screen I was excited.  My inner casting director thought Matthew McConoughey was the perfect choice to play Mickey Haller.  I was excited to see the movie and pleased with the results.  The movie stayed true to the novel and McConoughey finally delivered, after several suspect roles.  My inner casting director was pleased.

Have you ever tried to go back and read a favorite novel after its been made into a movie?  Try reading Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove without picturing Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as Gus and Woodrow.  Try and read Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity without seeing Matt Damon floating in your imagination.  It can’t be done!

Pick a Thomas Harris novel back up and read the exploits of the most chilling, evil antagonist ever written – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

     Hannibal Lecter:  Why do you think he removes their skins.  Agent Starling?  Enthrall me with your acumen.

     Clarice Starling:  It excites him.  Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims.

     Hannibal Lecter: I didn’t.

     Clarice Starling: No.  No, you ate yours.

Your nightmares will be forever invaded with the image of Sir Anthony Hopkins.

When you read Dennis Lehane’s Shelter Island did you see Leonardo DiCaprio starring in the role of US Marshall Teddy Daniels?  Did you read Charles Portis’ novel True Grit?  Who do you see in the role of Rooster Cogburn?  John Wayne or Jeff Bridges?  What about the adaptation of best-selling novel Da Vinci Code?  The novel sold over 65 million copies and ranks tenth on the all-time bestseller list.  But did 65 million casting directors agree with the choice of Tom Hanks to play Robert Langdon?  Or did you read Angels & Deamons and picture a different Langdon?

It will be interesting to watch how the public will react to Stieg Larson’s mega-seller The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo.  The soon to be released movie adaptation stars Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisabeth Salander.  Will you inner casting director be pleased?

Is there a book/movie that Hollywood’s casting director nailed it spot on?  Has there been a movie version of a favorite novel that was so miscast that your inner casting director vision was ruined?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think…

Note:  I read somewhere that one-third of high school graduates never read another book.  It has been reported 42% of college graduates never read another book after college.  We need more readers.  We need more casting directors!