I’ve been an avid reader since well before Kindergarten. I had a library card at about age five. Mom taught me to read, thank God. And I read. Lots. Early on, I found a favorite book, and I’ve read that book eight times. That book kinda led me into my life-long career of testing guns. The book was African Rifles and Cartridges by John ‘Pondoro’ Taylor, and I still have a copy on my bookshelf. It’s basically why I became the editor (two times now) of the British cartridge section of Cartridges of the World, and why I like great big rifles. And it probably got me my best job ever, Senior Editor (one of only two) for DBI Books, publishers of Gun Digest, etc.
When I was ten years old my family went to Holland for the summer. On the way there we stopped at my mother’s brothers’ houses. She had three brothers, Tony, Sam, and Stanley. At the time, Uncle Tony was a detective. Showed me his gun, a Smith Chief’s Special, and gave me a set of handcuffs, which I still have and which still work. Tony was special. He was the youngest soldier in WWI, with a commendation from the President about it. He was a boxer for a time, and once beat the champion boxer Battling Levinsky. Don’t believe it? Look in Wikipedia under Battling Levinsky, fight no. 279, 20 Aug 1928, which shows his loss to Tony Youkonis, my favorite uncle, aka “UT.”
On that stop in Allentown, visiting Mom’s relatives (only time I’ve ever seen ’em), I got a look at Uncle Stan’s gun collection. I mentioned to him that he didn’t have any big rifles, which he took as an insult from a ten-year-old kid. “That’s a 30-06,” he said. “It’s a pretty big rifle!” No, Stan, it was not. Later, on the way home from Holland, we stopped at the Smithsonian Institute where I saw a 4-bore rifle. THAT was a big rifle!!
Getting back to authors I like, the list varied over the years, as might be expected. Now in my ninth decade, I have a few standouts. To my list, based on some recent reading, I’ve added the name of Hildegard Gertrude Frye. Her writing, published around 1916-1920, is BRILLIANT. It shines, it tells stories, gives adventures, solutions, all in a style that makes me feel very, very good when I put one of her novels down during a many-day’s reading. I’ll bet a shiny nickel not one in a hundred readers of this blog will have heard of her. Now you can have fun finding out just what she wrote. Ten books for sure. If you choose to read them, start with the first, which has “Maine” in its title.
Another is Lester Dent, who started his journey in the Doc Savage books with an accurate representation of a very rare big rifle, the 577 Express, a huge British elephant cartridge. Not one in a thousand authors could have nailed it like Lester did. His descriptive passages along the way (he wrote 159 Doc Savage books) are some of the finest writing I’ve ever encountered. He also made some incomprehensible blunders. He didn’t know water is incompressible, and he didn’t know water is made of only Oxygen and Hydrogen. But the 577…!!! And that in Doc Savage book #1!
And of course there’s Edith Nesbit, who wrote a lot of stories for youngsters, but also some books of love and mystery along the way. She is of the late-1800’s time frame.
In that same time niche is Arthur Conan Doyle, whose stories are a joy to read. There is no crap in his writing. There are some gun blunders, tho.
Master of the gun blunders is Mickey Spillane, whose Mike Hammer stories got me wearing a 45 all day every day, but Spillane had never handled a 1911 45, much less spent any time shooting one. That was clear in his gun blunders.
Worst writer I’ve seen of late? James Grant, aka “Lee Child,” author of the Reacher stories. He has. Some of his work. Also he’s a master. Of indirect pronouns. Often one never knows. Who is talking. Books are 1/2 useless filler. Ask him about the man with a dozen dogs who is never mentioned again. Etc.
There are a few more names in my list, but this is getting a bit long. Perhaps another time.
