It wasn't the words that Struck me. It was the ideas. I didn't get hooked on books until my freshman year at a tiny, local junior college. It was an accident. The classes for my required subjects were spread out over the entire day. I had only one reason for attending this school. I wanted to get a better job. Consequently i would have to learn something. After a month or so, I had exhausted all wasting time avenues. As a last resort, I took a walk up the back steps to the small, one room library. Many of the shelves were still empty. The majority of the books were donated. This was the first year for this new, junior college program. It came as a part of the Kennedy administration. It was a good deal. I had absolutely no interest in books. But they were necessary if I wanted to earn more money one day. I browsed around. Then came my epiphany. There was one whole shelf in this half empty library that contained nothing but books written by one guy. His name was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was born and raised in my home state of Massachusetts, in Boston. Boston was just up the road from Lawrence where I came from. He worked as a waiter to help get through college. He was a worker just like me. He had a stupid name, Ralph Waldo. Ralph wasn't all that bad. After all we had that famous bus driver, Ralph Kramden. There was also this guy from Lawrence named Ferdinand Waldo Demara. They had just made a movie about him called, The Great Impostor. I saw it. It was great. Ralph Waldo Emerson had a whole shelf full of books that he wrote. He must have been very smart, I thought. Maybe if I read some of his books, I could be smart too. And that was when it started. From that time forward, I was never without a book ... never. Today I have a collection of books that I will never finish reading. I don't have enough life left to accomplish this feat. But I'm trying. I started this book reviewing project at the age of fifty-eight. I'm now seventy. I have about four hundred reviews written today. I have found them to be of great value to me. I can re-read my reviews and bring back to mind much of a book's content or what I thought about it. It is my idea that maybe my reviews can help other folks who are also hooked on books. That's the reason I've put together this volume of "Hooked on Books." I hope this helps some of you with your addiction. Have fun and stay healthy.
About the Author: MEET THE AUTHOR Richard Edward Noble was raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He attended St. Rita's grammar school in Lawrence, Central Catholic high school also in Lawrence, Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill and Merrimack College in North Andover. His mother and father and grandparents - on both sides of the family - were Lawrence textile workers. Richard lived in Lawrence until the age of twenty-seven and then migrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he met his wife Carol. Richard and Carol have been a team for over thirty-five years. Richard has been a truck driver, a butcher, a beef boner, a beef breakdown man, a dishwasher, an oysterman, a fruit picker, a restaurant manager, a chef, a small butcher shop owner, a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, a fry cook, a broiler man, an expediter, a restaurant line boss, a hole digger, a swill collector for a pig farm, a raw bar man, a sous-chef, a tomato sorter, a sander in a spray paint factory and the owner/operator of an ice cream parlor and sandwich shop in Carrabelle, Florida. These experiences and many more were published in Hobo-ing America - A workingman's tour of the U.S.A. and other works by this author. Richard is now retired and working as a writer. He writes fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. He published a column in a local newspaper. In 2007 he received a first place award for humor from the Florida Press Association for this column. Richard has a variety of interests - philosophy, history, politics, the American and world labor movements, economics, poetry, music, biography, autobiography and the unique history of Lawrence, Massachusetts.