I have always been a voracious reader from as far back as I can remember. My mother used to read to me as a very young child. My parents and teachers used to encourage me to read but it wasn't until I was about ten years old that my love of reading exploded!

I remember sitting on the couch one afternoon watching the legendary Detroit television host Bill Kennedy on his show "...At The Movies". The movie that day was "The Charge Of The Light Brigade"  (1936), staring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The film was based loosely on Alfred, Lord Tennysons poem commemorating an event that happened during the Crimean War (1853/1856). (You want to know more? Look it up!). 

While I was watching the English valiantly try to vanquish the Cossack and Russian forces my mom walked past and asked what I was watching. When I told her she quoted Tennysons poem..."Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred." She then walked over to the book case and plucked a copy of "The Complete works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson" off the shelf, dropped it into my lap and said "Here, read it for yourself!". And I did...and that led me to "Idylls of the King" which is Tennysons work of twelve narrative poems about the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table and introduced me to Grail Lore LONG before Dan Browns book "The Da Vinci Code".  Oh, and if you liked "The Da Vinci Code" check out "Bloodline of The Holy Grail" by Sir Laurence Gardner...way beyond Da Vinci Code. 

I'm not putting Browns book down. I read it and liked it. I like books that incorporate historically accurate information in them. I did think "Angels and Demons" was a better book and movie. But finding Dan Brown led me to Steve Berry who writes the same way...lot's of actual history in his books. I am currently reading Berry's latest "The Emperors Tomb" which is about China and hints at the possibility that fossil fuels might be a renewable resource. Imagine THAT!

The other day I was clicking around the TV and came upon the movie "Eldorado", staring John Wayne and James Caan. In the movie Caan quotes a line from the classic Edgar Allen Poe poem "Eldorado": "Over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow. Ride boldly ride the Shade replied if you seek for Eldorado." So I looked up the poem because in the back of my mind it sounded familiar. Sure enough...Edgar Allen Poe. I had studied his works in school. Reading that poem back then had led me to the story about Eldorado and the Lost City of Gold. THAT led me to read about the Spanish conquest of the Americas which led to how and where the horse came to the Americas which led to to Native American stories about the horse and the plains tribes and Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee, the fur trade in the west which led me back to the research my dad was doing on our family which goes back to 1700 and the beginnings of the City of Detroit which led me to do research on the specials I'm producing right now for udetroitradio "Paradise Valley to Motown: The Rock Starts Here!". What a trail eh?

I guess if I had to pick my favorite author it would be Hemmingway and my favorite poet would be Tennyson or Robby Burns. I think my favorite current author/writer  would have to be Detroits own Mitch Album. My favorite piece from Mitch was a series he wrote back in the 80's for the Detroit Free Press about the Iditarod Dog Sled Race...LOTS of history involved there!  As a kid I read Hemmingway and Jack London (Call of The Wild) and that would explain why I liked the Iditarod piece so much...action, adventure.

So I guess what I'm saying is get out from in front of the television and the computer...put the X-Box down pick up a book every once in a while and READ!

And by the way...I have a friend, Laura Antonelli who is an up and coming author. You can read some of her stuff here on udetroit...when her book comes out buy it...it's going to be a good one! And who knows where else it will lead you? 

Reading IS fundamental !

Ok...that's all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming...what times the game on ?