A Cup Of Coffee And A Good Book

Tomorrow, October 1st, is International Coffee Day. (September 29th was National Coffee Day.) I can't think of a better way to spend a rainy, gloomy afternoon (tomorrow it's supposed to rain all day here in New York) than to curl up with a good book and a steaming hot cup or two of coffee.

Childhood Reading Habits

The fiction writer Andrea Barrett was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" column (September 18, 2022) about her childhood reading habits. Ms. Barrett, the author of a story collection called Natural History, replied, "Greedy! Also indiscriminate, and drawn to books supposedly for grown-ups. Luckily the kind librarian at the local Bookmobile let us take any books we could reach (I was ridiculously tall)."

That statement reminded me of my own reading habits as a child. I spent more time in the adult section of my local library in Los Angeles than I did in the children's section. And when I checked books out from that section (mostly mystery and detective novels), the librarian (and my mother) didn't say to me that those books were not age appropriate, as would probably happen today.

A Child's View Of Prejudice

The New York Times Book Review recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of the publication of Laura Z. Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement, a bestselling novel about anti-Semitism.

Tina Jordan ("Inside the List," August 28, 2022) reported that Hobson (1900-1986) told the Book Review back then in 1947 that when she was completing work on her novel, she asked her 9-year-old son, "What's prejudice, Mike?" His answer is probably the best definition I've read, putting this social problem in a nutshell. "Well," he said, "I guess it's when you decide some fellow's a stinker before you ever met him."

I couldn't have said it better.