Read Across America Day

From Here

It's Read Across America Day with the day chosen to coincide with Dr. Seuss' birthday. So take a little time for yourself today and read something. Read to the little ones as well - Dr. Seuss always being a good choice.

I recently read When Books Went to War by Molly Guptile Manning. It's the story of supplying books to the Armed Forces during WWII. I didn't realize the extent of that. The Nazis destroyed over 100 million books before the war was over. Librarians in this country decided to send books to the soldiers and sailors to both show support for the troops and to counteract/demoralize the Nazis. Originally, it was a book drive but the donated books were mostly hardcovers and many of them were not the type of thing a soldier in a combat area would want to read. Eventually they came up with new printings of books in two sizes. One to fit the front pocket of their blouse and the other sized to fit in a back pants pocket. 

The back of the book lists all the books that were printed as part of the Armed Services Editions. I perused the list to see what, if any, were things that I've read out of the 140 million that were printed. My favorite, The Razor's Edge, made the cut (pun intended). There are quite a few others I've read as well - Jack London, Hemingway, Twain. Lots of cowboy stuff on the list that I'd like to tackle one of these days. There are several by Louis Bromfield. I've read a couple of his and I've also visited his Malabar Farm in Ohio. Interesting man. Several of his books were made into movies and Hollywood stars used to come and stay at his farm. He put everyone to work who stayed there. Bogart and McCall were married at the farm. The farm is an Ohio park now and is located close to Mid-Ohio race course, so if you go to the races might want to check out the farm as well. If you're looking for one of his books to sample, I'd recommend Pleasant Valley.