Nora found that reading about Raymond Chandler earlier — today is his birthday — made her reminisce. Fortunately she shared her book-loving memories with us.
The basement of my childhood home was lined with plank boards and cinderblocks (painted white so they didn’t look quite as cinderblock-y) to house all of the books that Dad and Priscilla owned. Periodically, I would poke through their collection looking for something new to read. One day, and I can’t remember how old I was at the time, I stumbled across my father’s mystery books. I’m pretty certain that my first read was a Nero Wolfe novel, and I quickly made my way through Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald. In middle school, I decided to expand the collection and went on a hunt for more Nero Wolfe. In high school, I focused on Travis McGee. In college, eBay was my friend and I found lots more to read.
I have a few memories that make me smile when I think of my mystery collection:
- Driving cross-country with a girlfriend in 2001. She was bored with the drive itself, so I passed her one of the Lew Archer books. She read it quickly and asked for more.
- Going home from work one extremely rainy night in DC. It was POURING. I exited the subway train, my head buried in Condominium (John D. MacDonald). Just as I approached the escalators to head up to the street, I heard the thunder boom and saw a huge lightning strike above me. I had reached a particularly climatic part of the book and the storm sounds scared the living daylights out of me. Terrified, but wanting to read more, I decided to wait out the weather. I stood in the Metro station for another hour and read. Eventually my roommate showed up and asked me what I was doing. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. At that point, I tucked my book in my bag and the two of us ran home as fast as we could. (Didn’t do much good — we were soaked when we got home!)
- When Jason and I first moved to Denver, I found a fun used bookstore in the Highlands. I picked up 5 or 6 new-to-me mysteries and read them all right away.
And of course, my favorite part of this story is that my parents always told me that I was named after Nora Charles from The Thin Man. Boy, I would have been Nick. Dog, I would have been Asta. 😉