Reading Fiction Books
Every child's interest in reading is probably sparked by fiction.
For myself, as a young boy, it was the Hardy Boys that did it.
Back in the mid 1950's the Mickey Mouse Club did an episodic serial based on Franklin W. Dixon's the Hardy Boys, The Tower Treasure. So when I came across a rack filled with his Hardy Boys mystery novels at a toy store, I had to try one and was hooked. For the next couple of years I bought and read and enjoyed every title. And though I never looked at them again, they followed me with each move until I finally sold them all on eBay some 45 years later.
The girls, of course, had Nancy Drew. But there were a couple of girls in my class who preferred Hardy Boys books and would borrow mine, which they eagerly read and I was happy to know they enjoyed..
It didn't take long to outgrow the Hardy Boys, after which I stopped reading fiction altogether except for the so called classics that were required reading throughout high school. How dull a pastime these were for an active boy who had plenty else to do, both indoors and out.
In college, my interest in reading really grew. There was the fiction I had to read, much as in high school, but I had found a world of ideas in thoughtful men, many of whose serious works I devoured and continued to devour throughout my life.
Yes, as an adult, virtually everything I read was non fiction. And I read a lot. But except for a few Robert Ludlum novels my wife suggested to me and some of John Gardner's takes on Ian Fleming's James Bond, 007, reading fiction for enjoyment was something I did almost nothing of between the Hardy Boys in junior high and my late 50's when, after his death, I was going through my father's books and came across a copy of Andrew Greeley's An Occasion Of Sin.
Since, like myself, my father's reading consisted of non fiction and I had never known him to read a novel, I wondered why he had purchased this book. Something in it must have caught his attention; it quickly took over mine. Soon I was reading and enjoying one Andrew Greeley Novel after another, finding copies on eBay and sometimes buying them by the box full.
It was sheer escapism but my situation, being pretty much isolated out in the countryside caring for an invalid wife, needed that escape. And I found most -- not all -- of Greeley's novels thoroughly entertaining as long as he kept his political views out of them!
I don't know why I've come to enjoy the work of priests, but like Andrew Greeley, Joseph Girzione is a Catholic priest, albeit retired, who has taken to writing and is probably best known for his Joshua novels. So far, I have read Joshua, Joshua And The Children, and The Shepherd,which was later renamed Joshua And The Shepherd, in which Joshua is not the main character but plays a lesser role.
Certainly different than Greeley's wide-scope entertainment, Girzone's Joshua novels seem to instill peace within me. His character, Joshua, touches my soul as if he really was Jesus here on earth, again, to lend a hand and show his love in a few special cases. I look forward to enjoying more of his Joshua stories as my renewed interest in fiction, lost since boyhood, continues.