February 17, Tuesday night -- Reading Gary Jennings

From the East Bay to San FranciscoReading The Journeyer, by Gary Jennings, about the life of Marco Polo. A friend loaned it to him twenty years ago and he just discovered it in a stack of books. Now that he's picked it up, he can't put it down. It's set in the 13th Century, but, he said, people are the same inside as they were back then. You can really relate to it. Right now Marco Polo is in China. The book, he continued, is like a garment -- what is bad and difficult is woven in with the joy.

He was just reading a book set in Malta in the 16th Century, with Christians fighting against Muslims.

He would like to think that people will get to a point where we won't have to have wars.

Though he now prefers Historical Fiction, he went through other genres, figuring out what he loved best. It started with books about Daffy Duck or Uncle Wigley. At the age of three, his mother began taking him to the library for story hour, where he'd hear the librarians read stories, using different voices for each character.

His mother was, and still is, a big advocate of literacy. At the age of eighty-four, she still volunteers at the public library to sit with adults who have problems reading.