Reading is supposed to be cool because of all the practical things you can learn for life, but I also enjoy the ah-ha moments. This is when I say, "Ah, that explains everything."Here are some of examples of what I mean.
When I turned 55, I finally got around to reading Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. This is when I realised that the American coffee shop Starbucks, which originated in Seattle, was named after the first mate of the Pequod in Melville's novel. How cool, I thought, that something so well known in pop culture was named after a character in one of the best books ever written.
Then there is the strange case of the fierce rivalry between my home state of Ohio and the neighbouring state of Michigan. These two states have always been sworn enemies, so the biggest college (American) football games of the year were those where Ohio State University faced Michigan State University.
I never knew why these two states were such fierce rivals until I read the book War As They Knew It by Michael Rosenberg. In that book I learned that about two centuries ago, Ohio took some land away from Michigan. Of course no one in those two states remembers that. We just know we don't like each other.Ah ha, I thought. This explains rivalries in other hot spots around the world as well. Long ago there was some unresolved issue that people no longer remember.
Last month I discovered a book called The Eleven Nations of North America: a History of the 11 Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodard. This shattered the myth–not to mention the history lessons I received in school–about the American Revolutionary War staged by the 13 original British colonies. Those 13 colonies did not form a closely knit political family. There were distinctly different nations inside the American colonies that merely united to fight a common enemy: the British.
Books are full of fascinating information. In Charles Dickens' classic novel Oliver Twist, I discovered that the word "crib" was used by thieves in the 19th century to refer to a house they had marked to rob. Crib is not an MTV slang word for a rapper's bachelor pad.
Books about books can provide fascinating information. The Making of a Masterpiece by Sally Tippett Rains tells the story of Margaret Mitchell and her historical romance Gone with the Wind. Mitchell's novel of the crumbling south during the American Civil War features a charming, but spoiled young woman, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, who is known simply as Scarlett in the novel. Originally, Mitchell had named her protagonist Katie. That certainly would have been a mistake.
Rains also debunks the myth that Mitchell died on the way to meet her publisher to discuss a sequel for Gone with the Wind. In her excitement, she supposedly stepped out in front of a car and was killed. This isn't true. She never planned a sequel to her masterpiece. She was coming home after a dinner with her husband when a drunk driver hit her.
Sometimes a book will lead me to an interesting Internet article. In one I learned that when Stieg Larsson delivered his Millennium Trilogy to his publisher in Sweden he had one stipulation: they could not change the titles of the books. They were to be called Men Who Hate Women I, II and III.
Larsson died shortly after he delivered his manuscripts to his publisher, making the promise all the more pressing. When the foreign rights were sold, however, Larsson's books became The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I'll leave you with this fascinating fact from The Eleven Nations of North America. El Norte formed the Spanish culture of Mexico and Texas, but it also spread southwest to California.
In the 17th century, the Spanish monks in the area of El Norte that is now in the US had large cattle ranches. They had to have these ranches because they couldn't depend on the Spanish in Mexico to provide food in the desert areas of El Norte.
Monks made the conquered Indians herd the cattle on the expansive land the missions owned. The monks gave the Amerindians horses and some chaps to wear. The Amerindians brought along their sombreros, which would morph some day into the ten-gallon hats that cowboys wore.The point is that Amerindians were actually the first cowboys.There's just no end to all of the fascinating facts you can learn from reading.