What I’m Reading: In the Beginning

I keep a bookshelf of classics in my home. Books I want to be able to look at anytime I please and read once every five years or so. Beat-up paperbacks worth their weight in gold. Having these books makes me feel safe – that I shall never, ever have a moment when I have nothing good to read (a panicky moment for a librarian). They’re not all strictly “literature.” My shelf of gold includes The Godfather and Interview with the Vampire along with Atlas Shrugged, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Shogun, the four books of the All Creatures Great and Small series, How Green Was My Valley, and In This House of Brede. Anna Karenina is on the shelf, too, but truth be told I haven’t actually READ that one.

I’m usually reading three to four books at a time – one or two on CD and one or two in print. Lately I’ve been reading some trash – excuse me, popular recreational reading material – like the half dozen John Grishams I just finished up on CD. It’s like a steady diet of McDonalds. But you don’t realize it until you eat a filet mignon and then that ole fish filet is seen in a new light.

I recently went to my classics shelf and picked out a book I hadn’t read since college. I don’t know how I initially came by this title, probably my father. He introduced me to a lot of good books. In any case…

The book is called “In the Beginning” by Chaim Potok.

Click on the book to read some great reviews from Amazon that I can’t top. I highly recommend this one. Moves you straight from french fries to a baked potato with fresh chives.

(No, this doesn’t mean I stopped reading the Stephen King book I was reading when I started In the Beginning, nor the one I was reading when I finished In the Beginning. French fries are tasty, damnit)