On Wed Jul-03-2013 07:41, Paul Quinn (3:640/384) wrote to Roger Nelson:

Hi,

 PQ> On Tue, 02 Jul 13, you wrote to me:

 RN> I was a voracious reader back then and read anything that looked
 RN> interesting, from murder mysteries, WWII stuff and from Sci-Fi to
 RN> Elementary Physics, which, believe it or not, was easier for me to
 RN> understand than Algebra 101.

 PQ> Same here but I started late; I did 95% of my reading growing up in
 PQ> the 60s.

I'm still growing up.  (-:

 PQ> I'm still not into 'murder mysteries', however during my schooling 
 PQ> I was whizzing through 3-4 books per week besides whatever was 
 PQ> required for classes.

I began with Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books, some Harold Robbins;
Sci-Fi with Leigh Brackett, Robert Moore Williams, A.E. van Vogt, Ray
Bradbury and my favorite, Isaac Asimov and some others.  A book wasn't safe
from me if it looked interesting.  That slowed down quite a bit when I read
Jaws, as did my fondness for surf fishing.  I also have a fondness for
Naval stories and my favorite among them all is Run Silent, Run Deep.  It's
a classic and much more brutal than Burt Lancaster's movie, which was based
on the book.

 PQ> The air war over England & Europe in WWII was a staple topic of 
 PQ> research.

I had some home schooling on that topic.  My brother's wife and her family
came from London to "Noo Orleens" after that war and I heard
firsthand about how terrifying it was for them.  My imagination went wild. 
True, we here saw newsreels of those events, but to talk to someone who
actually lived through it was fuel for the imagination.  If that wasn't bad
enough, my sister's father-in-law was an Army doctor (we called him
"the Colonel") who toured some Nazi concentration camps and he
gave us the "lay of the land."  That made the hair on the nape of
my neck stand on end.

 PQ> For SciFi, I was particularly taken with the Stainless Steel Rat 
 PQ> stories, and, genre.  Great stuff that didn't require the know-how 
 PQ> of the gadgets; things just worked, when they were working.

Like in the movie Battleship?  (-:


Regards,

Roger 
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+