Reading Matters. Maybe you remember the first time a book really grabbed you. The editors at Publishers Weekly certainly do. They recently offered their “first books that made you love books.”
The list: John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series; Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Albert Camus’ The Stranger; Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia; Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese’s The Five Chinese Brothers; Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion; Donald F. Glut’s novelization of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back; Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand; Vladimir Nabokov’s Mary; Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night; and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
I like that list for more than just the named books, some of which I have not read. For one thing, it shows that people can fall in love with reading at different ages. And that almost anything can make you a reader — a picture book, say, or a volume of humor, or the adaptation of a movie script, or something deeper.
And, once you commit to reading, feeling the love can be surprising, Rachel Deahl, the editor who chose Terabithia, described her experience this way:
“I was assigned to read Bridge to Terabithia over a summer in elementary school, and I found the book to be corny. I trudged on. Then a weird thing happened: I got to the end of the book and, even though I knew what was going to happen, even though I didn’t even like what I’d read up to that point, I cried. A lot. The experience taught me something about books: they can sneak up on you and make you see things and feel things that you never expected.”
•
Celebrity Trials. The current issue of People magazine includes a look at the troubles of Cory Monteith, the Glee co-star who recently checked into rehab.
Monteith has been public about pre-stardom troubles with drugs and alcohol, but the latest difficulties are being blamed on the success that Glee provided. “Once he made it in Hollywood,” the magazine says, he gradually took up drinking and then other substances.
This, of course, lets people tsk-tsk yet again about what the show-biz life does to young people. Monteith, to be sure, is 30, but the adolescent tilt of Glee makes it all the more likely that he will be lumped with performers like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears who took big detours from success.
And folks right now are ticking off lists of still more celebs as evidence that the Devil runs Hollywood. Consider, for example, recent reports that Teen Mom’s Farrah Abraham decided a good career move was making a sex tape with porn actor James Deen. (Abraham, 21, told Hollywoodlife.com that it was a “personal” video so “when I am older I will have my best year to look back on.” OK … )
Still, it is more than possible to work in show business and not get on the express train to crazy town. Annette Funicello, who passed away earlier this week, had a squeaky-clean image that she kept from adolescence into adulthood even as some of her contemporaries struggled to do the same. As much as people make fun of Taylor Swift’s romantic difficulties, you’re doing all right if the worst thing that people say about you is you’re a serial dater. Similarly, Nashville’s Hayden Panettiere has managed to get from work as a very young child to her relatively unblemished twenties.
So far.
It always seems that the best way to describe the current condition of any performer is with an admission that TMZ could change that reputation tomorrow. That everyone is just one ambush interview outside a club away from career decline.
Still, when news like that about Monteith breaks, it’s important to remember that it’s not just performers who get in trouble.
For every young person who stumbles in the public spotlight, there are others who don’t find the light blinding. And even those who do stumble can eventually find their way. Also from People, from an unnamed Monteith insider: “People seem pretty certain he’ll get better.”
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and Ohio.com, including the HeldenFIles Online, www.ohio.com/blogs/heldenfiles. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. You can contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@hthebeaconjournal.com.