I have been sitting and thinking about all the books i have read, i never realized how long i have been reading, my mother used to read a lot there was always books laying around as a child and always burnt food because the book was a “one more page” type of book. She never encouraged me to read and my dad never read at all. Come to think about it, I wonder if he could read. He was more a drinker type man, he was good at that, so how i started i do not know.
I remember I was sick with mumps and had a book from the library, a really thick hardcover, “jock of the bushveld” by “Percy Fitzpatrick” and i started to read and read and read. I finished the book in three days, keep in mind i was about 12 and i recall finishing it and closing the back cover and sitting stunned that i had completed the whole book. That moment set off a change in my life and I had moved on from picture books to serious reading, as far as i was concerned i was an adult.
I soon read all the “secret seven” books by “Enid Blyton” but soon they seemed to me more a children’s genre, so I progressed to adult books. At this time i was about 14 and rebelling against school, i hated school. The man next door, he was also a drunk but he did read and all he read was “Louis L’Amour” as far as I can remember. I stole a one day from him, he was passed out, that book changed my life, soon i was on my bicycle peddling around Durban, John Milne book shop on the beach, a shop in St Georges street, another on Berea road and my collection of “Louis L’Amour” books was started, I had shelves of them and they were my pride and joy. I would lay reading until the sun came up and then refuse to go to school, in reality “Louis L’Amour” was the reason I think most that caused me not to finish school.
After the “Louis L’Amour” period the “James Hadley Chase” era started and simultaneously the “Edge” series” by “George G. Gilman” I think i read all the “Edge” books and a lot of “Chase” after that period in my life i left school and started drinking to much, my need for books was always there but i never read as much. Later on after spending a period in hospital and realizing it was time to grow up i managed to kick the alcohol and dope issues, my savior was books and i have read books from “Friedrich Nietzsche” and “Tolstoy”, “Dickens” and “John Steinbeck,” it has been a wild journey through pages.
In school we had an Afrikaans teacher “Mrs Theunhiusen” who read a chapter out of a book in Afrikaans every week, this was the reason i went to school on that day. I would sit and listen for 30mins in another world, a world of peace. The book “District Six” I never found, I looked and my memory fails to remember the story. I don’t know who wrote it but it is something I have never forgotten and I have a vivid picture of “Mrs Theunhiusen” walking down the isles reading.
The books embedded into my memory most is “Louis L’Amour” and one day i wish i could once again start a collection, books from bookshops, all second hands, all eared, marked and well read, keep them in a private room for my own sanity, a monument to a man thousands of miles away writing about people thousands of miles away who i will never see feel or hear, but who changed my life with his imagination, a man who passed though my life like a ghost and altered my direction and fate.
The strange part of all this is, no one even knows i read books, no one has ever seen me read besides one or two people, no one knows of the Saturday’s’’ I peddled all over Durban looking for books on a bicycle.
What has all this reading done for me ? I don’t know, nothing really, then again most drugs never do any person good.
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