We didn't sit around the dining table talking about Madam Walker, but the silverware that we used every day had her monogram on it and our china for special occasions had been Madam Walker's china... and the baby grand piano on which I learned to read music had been in A'Lelia Walker's apartment in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.
Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.
I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.
I am a serious reader, and I read slowly.
Our synagogues are spread all over the world, and we want people to respect them and look after them. And we have to respect the places of prayer of others.
We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans.
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader.
I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.
