I started reading very young and by the 3rd grade I had consumed most of Agatha Christie’s mysteries and all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.  Shortly after, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels became an obsession.  I still love a good detective story a good mystery, but in truth, even though there are now literally thousands of titles in that genre – and I’ve probably read several hundred of them – very very few stick with you.   I was talking to a group of writers at a conference a while back and Dean Koontz’ name came up.   He’s sold a gazillion books and made more money than God or the Rolling Stones, and I’ve probably read over a dozen of them.  But as we speak, I could not tell you what even one of them was about.   While I could tell you the plots of virtually every single Sherlock Holmes story ever written.  For me, discovering Russian literature was the turning point.  It happened in High School and the first novel was Anna Karennina.  After that, it was Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment.  Then I discovered Puskin and his verse novels.  Finally came War and Peace – easily my favorite book of all time.  I find myself quoting from it constantly, over thirty years after I first read it! In the last ten years or so, I’ve found myself drawn to magical realism more than any other genre.  Partly because it is so infrequently successful.   In fact, I think you can probably name on one hand – maybe two hands - all the masterpieces of the genre – but those few, those happy few!    Magical Realism is a style that is almost exclusively unique to the printed page and by extension to the mind’s eye of the reader.   That makes it very special.  The images that the mind conjures up while reading Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale” or Gabriel Garcia Marquez “100 Years of Solitude” still give me goosebumps just thinking of them years and year later.  The first time that Athansor (Peter Lake’s horse) flies, I held my breath and almost forgot to start breathing again.  The swarm of yellow butterflies from 100 Years of Solitude still brings a smile to my lips and tears to the eyes.   The impossible and the implausible, the very laws of physics fall before the imagination and the craft of the author.  That is what make Magical Realism so wonderful. I’m currently reading a collection of Ray Bradbury short stories.  His literary skills aside, his storytelling abilities are extraordinary.  He can take on virtually any genre or subject matter and spin a gripping tale around it.  It’s an education for me.   I recently finished Dan Brown’s Inferno and thought it was the worst piece of crap I’ve read in a really long time.  I didn’t care for his last book either, but I thought I’d give it another chance.  I also LOVE reading collected letters of historical figures.  I’ve just finished the Leonard Bernstein Letters and it was incredible!   The almost absurd collection of famous people he counted among his close friends is staggering.  But the most enjoyable part of the book is hearing what really ‘normal’ people these giants of history, art, culture, politics really are!   In one week he wrote or received letters from Stephen Sondhiem, Boris Pasternak, Aaron Copland, Frank Sinatra, Marnie Nixon and Georg Solti – quoting the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty Four!”   The collected correspondence of famous figures reflects a completely different time in history, a time of writing and of letters.   The digital revolution is of course a wonder of convenience, but what will future generations be left with?   The collected tweets of Dan Brown and AK Rawlings?