DON LEVIN

From the time I was a young boy I have been a voracious reader. Anyone who knows me knows the degree to which I love books. I love the adventure, the escape, the history, the provocation of thought and accompanying rush of possibility thinking.

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I also find great comfort and security when I am in the middle of a good read, and a certain sense of loss and displacement between the end of the read and the start of the next.

 

As Thomas Jefferson shared with John Adams, "I cannot live without books; but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object." Another quote that I have lived by is from Mark Twain who once said, "Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

 

I admire the imagination of some of today’s writers but at the same time often walk away after completing a book with the feeling that the author deprived of us just maybe another ten pages to really wrap things up, or was not disciplined and could have pared the book down by one hundred pages.

 

I think most people imagine that they “have a book in them” if they only had the requisite skill and discipline to write it. I was one of those people and then discovered the joy that comes with writing. It became my creative outlet and the means by which to capture inner thoughts to be shared with family and friends.

 

For years I have been known as a storyteller to those arounds me. Some say it with admiration and mirth in their voices, others with a roll of their eyes that instantly conveys, “heard it, been there, move on.” In any event, I write for my enjoyment and now evidently yours as well. It does not get any better than that in so far as I am concerned.

 

Thank you for reading, and sharing your comments and insights.