It's impossible to be fully booked.

I have come to the conclusion there are some situations where restraint just ain’t gonna happen.

For the most part, I can make it around a supermarket with only minimal dodgy shit making it into the trolley. And when I see my beloved at the airport, I can restrain myself from leaping into his arms in such a fashion that he will require a surgical truss for the next three months. And usually, I can say no an extra piece of cake.

I cannot, however, walk into a book store and simply ‘look’.

You stick so many stories, ideas, and smells of adventure in one place and I can guarantee you that I'm gonna want to take some home. Not that I necessarily have time to read all of these books, but OMG:

BOOKS!!

Who’s with me here??

There’re rows and rows of ‘em in these places: big ones, small ones, skinny ones, fat ones, fiction, non-fiction, ....everything from gardening to Grumpy Cat. How is one supposed to resist God damnit! 

Let alone if they have a sale on....that’s just silly talk.

I have given up. I have come to the conclusion that if I go in, more than just me will be coming out.

I guess it’s understandable though, when you think about it; my first word was “book” (like, actually) and I grew up with a ton of ‘em. I can’t say I ever saw my parents read much but I know it happened. Dad was quite the Wilbur Smith and Brian Callison fan when it came to bed time reading. Mum was a bit of a late bloomer and has only been into the novels for the last 15 years or so starting when I bought her Frank Mc’Court’s Angela’s Ashes as a gift. But my reading was always strongly encouraged.

I sense a trip down memory lane coming here...

Yep, here it comes....

I remember my first school-age book infatuation being with the ‘Twistaplot’ book series, in particular “Train of Terror”. You know the ones, where you read a few pages then had to choose which path (storyline) to take (“Pick-a-Path books were similar): Choose to buy the hamburger, go to page 48 (where you promptly choke on it) or choose to walk away and go skating, turn to page 91 (the option that lets you live for at least a few more pages.) These books taught you the hard way, to be prepared for anything let me tell ya.

Around the same time I also consumed the series of 6 ‘Meg’ mysteries by Holly Beth Walker and then The Hardy Boys series (none of this girly Nancy Drew crap for me) and developed a firm ambition from there to be a police detective. This did not pan out obviously, but was probably my first real occupational goal as a child. I collected almost the entire series of Hardy Boys books the way my own child was later to collect ‘Goosebumps’ books. I even read their survival handbook and became a firm follower of the TV show...subsequently developing a fairly decent crush on Shaun Cassidy. We were totally dating...but he was usurped by Simon Le Bon a year or so later before I could ever let him in on the deal.

It wasn't just the books I read to myself, however, that were memorable. At times I recall being read stories, chapter by chapter, at school. I was exposed to several Roald Dahl books this way but also heard an exceptional tale written by Robert C. O’Brien called Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Mandatory childhood reading right there I say.

Marilyn Sachs (Amy and Laura and Laura’s Luck) and Judy Blume were other authors I investigated in my youth. But the books I really got a kick out of for a while were anything where you had to work something out, Encyclopaedia Brown being a good example here.

Moving on, I concurrently developed a love of both horror and animals stories, though fortunately, not in the same storylines. Before I get to them, however, a few other random reads rate a mention.

One stray book I read, relating to neither of the above topics was Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones (who also wrote Howl’s Moving Castle among other children's fiction). This book was just odd but I loved it very much and still have fond memories of it to this day.

Another, that had me in fits of hysteria, was I Want to go Home by Gordon Korman, which relates the story of two boys at Summer Camp, one of which (Rudy) is trying permanently to escape. It’s just gold.

Relating back to the horror genre, in high school (age 12/13+ in New Zealand) I developed a complete addiction to teen horror writer Christopher Pike who had the ability to freak you out like no one else; The Chain Letter series and Road to Nowhere are firm favourites of his. There was also one ending with an evil spirit getting trapped inside a blind parrot which sticks in my mind...as it would, I guess. This obsession (with Christopher Pike, not blind parrots) later translated to a keen following of Dean Koontz as an adult and also the reading of several Stephan King books (Needful Things is one of my favourites here, far better than the movie).

Along the animal lines, one of the best books ever written, in my humble opinion, would have to be Richard Adams’ Watership Down. The world of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Kehaar and the many other animals on this journey is just absorbing from start to finish. I cried like a baby both times I read the damn thing and would recommend it to anyone, adult or child, for the rest of forever.

The White Fox by Brian Parvin was another favourite as well as anything else dogsledding/Iditerod/Arctic oriented.

It was about mid high school that I started to appreciate autobiographical works. I read Scot Free, an hilarious personal account of Alastair Scott’s foray from the Arctic to Mexico while wearing a Kilt; The Autobiography of the Reza Kahn Pahlavi (aka the previous Shah of Iran before the Ayatollah Khomeini got in there) and another that you may find odd or even hypocritical for a professed animal lover...

Death in the Long Grass by Peter Hathaway Capstick is one of the best books of the hunting/ranging genre you will read. Recounting tales from his time as a white hunter and game ranger in Africa in the sixties and seventies, Capstick entertains with humour and action packed stories, all the while reminding the reader that you respect all of Africa’s occupants or you die. While some of his stories did involve escorting trophy hunters (something that declining animal numbers and growing ethics just can’t support these days) a lot of his work was also sorting out rogue animals and culling populations when they exceeded what their environment could support. He was an advocate for safe and responsible hunting and a staunch enemy of poachers. This book is pure ‘unputdownable’ reading pleasure.

As I got older, regardless of whatever other stuff was going on in my life, I relished in the fact that I could always retreat into a book. From trying out a few of Dad's Brian Callison books (The Auriga Madness and Trapp in World War Three  being especially excellent), to consuming epics like Gone with the Wind or thought provokers like Catch 22,  I was always able to escape my world into that of someone else’s.

My horror bent later shifted to crime with a love of Patricia Cornwell and while her protagonist, Kay Scarpetta is an appealing one to me, my favourite part of any of her books will always involve Kay's niece Lucy Farinelli; she is just queen of intellectual, helicopter-flying badassery.

I also lean socio-political at times and consequently highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff’s Life Inc (originally a required text for a university paper I was doing but now seriously one of the best books I have ever read)  as well as Us and Them by Australian ‘respected journalist and media commentator’ Peter Manning. The latter should be compulsory reading for every Australian and goes a long way to addressing the media's part in creating an Islamophobic nation.

Today my interests are broader than ever. While I have knocked off several of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (The Handmaid’s Tale –Margaret Atwood; To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson; The Catcher in The Rye – J.D. Salinger; Supercannes – J.G Ballard [another favourite] to name a few), I also like to frequently kick back with a little of what’s currently popular or an amusing autobiography. I just tend to go with what appeals on the day I start a book.

So what am I reading right now? Well I have just finished The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion... delightfully entertaining, I must say, and have moved on to Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World. 

What it'll be next is anyone’s guess!

So what’s on your nightstand at the moment? New titles come at me!!