Reviewer Spotlight

Branch: Main Library

This month Reader’s Club salutes Nathan, an avid reader and frequent reviewer. Nathan has reviewed a variety of titles for Reader's Club, both fiction and nonfiction. Here is what Nathan has to share with us:

I have always loved reading, probably as a result of growing up with a mother who was one of the only people in her family who could read at all and a father who was an English teacher. I learned how to escape in a good book at an early age. Today, I find it is probably one of the most relaxing things I can do with my personal time. I'd usually rather sit down on a porch with a cup of coffee and a good book than just about anything else in the world. I can turn any location or any circumstance into an excuse to read!

My reading tastes are rather eclectic. I'm currently reading When the Pentagon was for Sale, a history of defense procurement scandals in the 1980's, written by Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Pasztor. Next on my list is The Excruciating History of Dentistry, an apparently comic nonfiction work about how dentistry has impacted the course of human civilization. My favorite topics to read about are history and physics. One of my favorite things to read is a good biography. A well-told biography can make a historical or contemporary figure come alive, and make you excited about history. It doesn't matter who the biography is about; I have read biographies of political figures, religious figures, entertainers, writers, drug addicts, preachers, physicists, doctors, soldiers & generals, sports stars, ship captains and Star Trek cast members. One week you may find me reading a biography of J. Edgar Hoover and the next week you might finding me reading a collection of David Sedaris humor essays or a Brian Greene book about the search for a unified field theory. That's not to say I understand the things I read. Astrophysics is mostly over my head, trust me! But part of the joy of reading, for me, is discovering things you didn't know, whether you understand them or not, because every time you do that the world seems bigger. In a technological age that makes the world seem continually smaller, reading has, for me, become one of the few experiences that reveals the world to be large and complex and diverse.

It would be difficult if not impossible to name my favorite book. However, if pressed, I'll go with Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It is a book everyone should read, and I personally think it has more to say today than it did when Heller wrote it. Hands down, it is one of the funniest, most inspiring books I've ever read, filled with characters so peculiar you don't believe them yet so real you start to realize you have friends just like them. I re-read it about once a year. Two fiction authors I've loved in the last couple of years are Dennis Lehane and Carl Hiaasen. Lehane's Shutter Island is the best fiction mystery I've read in a long while, and Carl Hiaasen never fails to keep me laughing. My favorite authors include Joseph Heller, Carl Hiaasen, Dennis Lehane, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Pynchon, Brian Greene, David Sedaris, Stephen Ambrose, Phillip K. Dick and Umberto Eco. And I have to confess an undying fondness for Hunter S. Thompson, God rest his soul.

Writing reviews is, for me, a natural extension of my love of reading. The most difficult part for me is keeping them short. The more I love a book or the more I'm learning from it, the more I want to talk about it. The fun part, though, is the excitement of possibly convincing someone else to read something that I've loved.

Thanks Nathan!