My mother died last week. Not a tragedy, she was a couple weeks short of 103. I’m thinking of her because of the way she loved to read. Everything. She studied creative writing with some of the best writers of the twentieth century. Sinclair Lewis is the one who comes to mind because she liked to say that if he considered something easy to write he graded it down no matter how good it was. Mom wasn’t a snob about literature. One of my fondest memories was of her chuckling over a story I’d written that was in one of those complimentary copies of the magazine that writers are usually given. And chuckling over the stories of other writers, not her children, in those same magazines. Before turning to War and Peace or something similar. I try to follow in her footsteps and be an eclectic reader.
