In honor of my dad

Thinking a lot about reading. How what we read affects us. Affects how we think. Affects how we view the world.

I just realized that all my main characters in the books I write are readers. Maybe that's because I don't really understand the inner workings of people who don't read. Maybe it's because I best understand people who do read.

At any rate, Grant--the protagonist--in the novel I'm working on now, is an avid reader. He's also a baseball player who wants to make it to the big leagues. When I started working on this story, he wasn't such a reader. He was too "active" to want to read.

Then I sat talking with my Aunt Ruby--my dad's sister--who told me that my dad, Orland Fjelland--always had his "nose in a book" when he was growing up--that he read constantly. I knew my dad loved to read, but I'd never thought about him as a reading kid. I'd heard stories about using barrel staves as skis, sledding the hills in the timber in winter, swimming in the creek, riding bucking horses, riding the draft horses home from the fields, about sneaking away as a young man to ride in the rodeo...but I never thought about him as a voracious reader.

So in tribute to my dad, my character is now a voracious reader. And it's been fun to figure out which books he would be reading in the mid-1930s.

Just wish my dad were still around. I think he might like this book. At least, I sure hope so. I guess I have my "ideal reader" for this one.