Most folks think growing up is the time to learn, and that the rest of life is for coasting on that education. But as you age, you realize that every phase of life has its required coursework. At sixty-two I’ve already forgotten most of what I learned in my K-12 years, and now that I’m retired, I’m quickly forgetting all the things I learned during my work years. The knowledge I acquired in the first third of life prepared me for the second third, and what I learned in the second third, got me ready for the final third, but now that I’m living in the final third of life, I feel like I need to study hard for a next phase. If I was a religious man, that would be a spiritual quest, but I’m not. I’m studying for nonexistence, and that is changing my reading habits.
Most people talk about having a bucket list of activities they want to accomplish before leaving this planet, but I don’t think along those lines. As a lifelong bookworm, all I want to do is read more books before I die. I find reading in the final third of life has affected what books I want to read. Strangely, I want read more nonfiction, as if facts are more comforting to dying, like fantasy was more inspiring to growing. It appears that leaving reality makes you want to take more notice of what you’re leaving. Most of us grow up hoping our childhood ambitions will come true as adults, but then settle for something more realistic. Instead of becoming an astronaut I became a database programmer, and even then I continued to read science fiction all during my adult life. Now that it’s pretty obvious that I’m never going to travel in space, Earth has become far more fascinating.
Even when I read novels now, I admire the details I can connect to reality. This morning I started listening to Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, and his prose dazzles me with details, fictional facts that feel so authenticate, I’m sure Truman was acting as a recorder of reality. Before that, I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a literary fantasy based on 19th century life in the Caribbean, long before Rhys was born, yet it felt real. Rhys was born on Dominica, in 1890, and lived there for her first 16 years. My hope is knowledge Rhys gained growing up in the West Indies distilled into her 1966 novel. Before that was Factory Man by Beth Macy, a nonfiction book that was jam-packed with juicy realistic details, but told in a narrative form that was as exciting as any novel.
I crave details about reality, but I can’t just read Wikipedia all day long, even though that is very tempting. And in the coming years, as I get closer to winking out of reality, it might come to that. I still crave fiction, but it has to have a tight connection to reality. Last night I watched The Crusades, an old Cecil B. DeMille epic, that made me hunger to read a nonfiction book on the subject the whole time I was watching. At one time, all that mattered for a novel or movie to enchant me, was a great story and characters. Now, my critical and entertainment reaction needs to know how close the story, setting and characters models reality. This age related transformation is changing my love of science fiction, making me crave more realistic science fiction, and that has philosophical implications too. Driving into this world the future seemed full of fantastic possibilities, and now that I’m on the road leading out of town, the future seems far more restricted than the sense of wonder probabilities of youth.
And that’s another thing about how age is changing my reading habits. In the 20th century I read mostly about the 21st century and beyond, but now that I’m living in the 21st century I mostly read about the 19th century and earlier. I wonder if that’s true of other aging bookworms who grew up reading science fiction?
JWH – 8/27/14
Auxiliary Memory 
One thought on “What To Read Before I Die”