My new obsession is reading. My weekends and week nights are now spent reading rather than binging tv and movies. I still do that too but not nearly as much (I have cut out a lot shows that were crappy anyway). I have had hundreds of books for many years, and I kept buying more and more each year. I think I have over 200 on my kindle and about the same amount on my shelves. Each year I would vow to read more and watch less, but it wasn’t until last year, my 44th, that I actually accomplished my goal. I read 37 books last year (and only 13 the previous year). Of course over half of those books were about Elvis (my number 1 obsession) – 23 Elvis books to be exact.

I read memoirs, autobiographies and biographies of musicians and actors and politicians. I also read histories – of music, of cities, of the 1950s, of pop culture. And I am also trying to read the classics. This year I have vowed to read 50 books and only half of them can be about Elvis. My plan is to alternate Elvis books with the others, so every other book I read is an Elvis book.

I am off to a great start. I have read five books in the past week and a half, since my birthday on October 4th, and I am halfway through my sixth. I have read Raised on Elvis! Elvis! Elvis! A Look Back at the Good Times by Sandi Pichon, Natalie A Memoir by her Sister by Lana Wood, The James Dean Story by Ronald Martinetti, The Graceland Gates by Harold Loyd, Every Night is Saturday Night by Wanda Jackson and currently reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I will review each of these books as well as ones I will read this year in subsequent blog posts. (Well ‘review’ might be too strong of a word.) Please keep coming back to read my thoughts on what I’ve read.