Reading saved my life.

I was watching a documentary about the movie Jaws, and at the end of the show they flashed a glimpse of the 'best-seller' list from the year 1974. I froze the list on the screen and realized I'd read 9 out of the top ten.

In fact, I think that year I read a couple of hundred books (I remember over 250, but that can't be right, can it?).

Many of them were the best-sellers of the day.. This ain't bragging. I was the depths of my depression and agoraphobia and was staying in my tiny little quad room and reading and reading and reading....venturing out for a movie....some T.V.......then to the library to load up and then back to reading....movie....reading.....reading....

I was a vampire. A reading vampire.

Later on, when I looked over that list (which I can no longer find) of 200-300 books I read, I realized I had read a lot of, well, bad books. I would finish everything I started in those days, and wasn't very discerning about quality other than I liked something or I didn't like something.

I read many authors and titles I would never go near now -- in fact, I tried reading some of these authors years later and discovered they truly sucked -- but, hey, I know who they are and what they're about and even understand the appeal when someone asks for them now.

An irony is that my selection of books completely reflected the Zeitgeist of the popular culture of the moment -- during the time when I was more emotionally and physically separate -- alone -- than any other time in my life.

Despite my solitariness depression, I remember still being intellectually curious and hardly ever bored.

I think, in a way, reading books saved my life.