Sure, he found a copy of Les Miserables in the high school library to occupy his lonely lunch hours, but it is Miss Hunter, the Beaufort high librarian who doesn’t cotton to students reading in her library and likes a little Jack Daniels for her nagging head cold, who is the memorable part of his essay. While he does spend time talking about the books and writing that captured his imagination both as a boy and later as an adult, it is the portraits of the people - the book lovers and odd characters that he met along the way - that make for the most interesting reading. It is a story about how that love of books can become a lifelong obsession. This is not a voluminous tome, but it is a serious reflection on how a lonely young boy with little opportunity to make friends because his military family was constantly moving from base to base, a boy tormented by an abusive father, was able to find both an escape and a calling in books.
For a writer who has a reputation for writing lengthy blockbusters, a reputation he not only admits is accurate, but one he takes pride in, Pat Conroy’s little collection of essays on his love of books and the people who influenced and fostered that love, My Reading Life, is something of a departure.
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