What I read during my tween years doesn’t come easily to mind. I know that I devoured the Hardy Boys series, eagerly finishing one book and starting with another soon thereafter.
I can’t recall when I stumbled onto the Western books by J.T. Edson, but I can clearly remember they were favourites of mine. Two regular characters in these books come to mind, Dusty Fog and The Ysabel Kid. Fond memories.
Somewhere in the mix, I also read the Roy of the Rovers comic books as well as the Archie and Jughead ones. These books formed part of my everyday life during my days in Kensington.
My teenage and early twenties were spent reading mostly novels and fiction. Some titles that come to mind are The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. At one stage I kept a list of all the books I had read. Sadly, the list is no more and many of the books were donated to charity.
A friend triggered my memory about the photo-story books that were very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. There were titles in English and Afrikaans, such as Tessa, Kid Colt, Ruiter in Swart, Grensvegter, Melody, Kyk, See, Saboteur, and many others. We owned a corner café in Elsies River, which is a cliché about Indians and corner shops. Therefore, I had regular access to photo-story books. When you love to read, you read anything!
Most of my reading was done at night. In the daytime, we worked at our corner shop (not an enjoyable experience if you are young), so I had to wait until the shop closed at night to go back to reading. I would read from about 9 pm until 1 am. I was immersed in reading. I often read a book from cover to cover within one sitting. It should come as no surprise that I am a night owl.