![]() ![]() With laser focus I absorbed Carl Sagan and Charles Dickens and the diary of Anne Frank, along with NC-17 titles by Iceberg Slim and Charles Bukowski and multiple volumes of a series titled “Truly Tasteless Jokes.” Every session at Green Apple was a roller coaster, with the classic readerly emotions of wonder and discovery interlaced with titillation, fear, shock and repulsion. Like my parents, the employees at Green Apple were unconcerned with the reading habits of the 12-year-old in their midst. ![]() Included in that roaming zone was Green Apple Books, a cherished San Francisco institution packed to the beams with new books, old books, blue books and paperbacks from the 1970s that reeked so powerfully of menthol cigarettes and camphor that I often emerged with that same scent wafting from my stretchy purple turtleneck. ![]() As long as I was relatively clean and not punching my younger brother’s lights out, I pretty much had the run of the house and a one-mile radius surrounding it. Every day I’m alive is a day I’m thankful that my parents were too busy to supervise my reading as a child. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |