A Dream come true

Writing a book has been my life’s dream. I’ve had ideas for all sorts of novels, short stories, and how-to books. I became a librarian because I loved books so much. And I quickly found my favorite part of the job was learning about the books and matching them up with their perfect readers.

So it was really no surprise when I decided after retirement that I wanted to write a book about books to encourage other people to read them.

Why nonfiction?

Stories are wonderful! I understand entirely the delight many people find in immersing themselves in new worlds, historical fiction, and good mysteries. Stories help us understand ourselves and other people in new ways. Telling stories is a deep-rooted part of humanity, so many of us enjoy fiction.

Nonfiction books tell stories too. They encourage us to discover the facts about historical events to make more sense of them. Some of them help us understand the natural world or celebrate great art. Others tell us about the lives of people like us, both the famous, the infamous, and the unknown. And many of them, through example or instruction, teach us to make our lives better.

While most nonfiction books don’t contain flights of fancy, they can help us make sense of the world. And in the process, we can find our own ways to contribute to making it a better place for all of us.

My first book

Three years of my life have gone into making this book. It took almost two years to research, going through all 65 lists of books I consulted, some of them dating back a century. Then I arranged them in Dewey Decimal Classification order. Finally, I read book reviews and summaries of all of them. The actual writing and production of the book took a year.

For me, the work was satisfying. I loved learning about the authors who took years of their lives to provide us with the information they gathered and the conclusions they drew. The books themselves are gifts. I’ve read as many of them as I could. Each has opened new ideas and perspectives for me. They have all changed me, at least to some extent. I feel expanded through the reading. And I’m grateful for the big pile of them in my spare bedroom with many more, just waiting to be discovered.

Join me

If you value learning, and you enjoy wrestling, at least in your mind, with the ideas of others, I invite you to join me.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.

Let me know what you think of the books you read. Let me know if you have ideas for future books. Let’s learn together!