Does anyone ever ask how you choose the books you read?  Probably not. Sadly, over the last forty years or so,  I have seen a gradual decline in reading.   NO INTEREST.  That’s not news, but that’s not GOOD.  I’m an ENGLISH TEACHER.  When I ask my students where they find their books, they tell me Walmart.  Jaja.  Silly me.  I’m not aware of any bookstores open for business here in Imperial Valley.  When I look for books in Walmart, I find them in the emptiest and/or loneliest aisle of the store.  It’s cold down that way, like Frozen Foods.  You know what?  I have never ever seen anyone physically pluck a book off a shelf in Walmart.  Maybe a lot of people buy their books at Walmart; if they didn’t, these books woudn’t be prominently displayed.  But, then again, a lot of us buy stuff at Walmart that we never use.  In this country we are all hyper-consumers. I suspect these books purchased at Walmart never get read.

OK, so I will tell you.  I’ll tell you how I find my books. I’m a suscriber to Believer Magazine.  This is where I have discovered literary critic Nick Hornby’s column “Stuff I’ve Been Reading.”  Every time I pick up my new issue of Believer, I go straight to Nick’s column to find out his "Books Bought" and "Books Read."    I’m so happy NOT to read any book reports here.  Nick shares more about his personal reading experience than any deep analysis of the text. Nick is an accomplished author himself. I haven’t read any of his novels, but every time I read one of his columns, I’m inspired to buy a few more books myself.  This year, I’m on a pace to meet a goal of 50 books read.  Many of them are books that Nick has read.  Nick probably reads upwards of 200.  That’s cool.  I look to Nick as someone who reads for the rest of us.

This Fall 2025, I ask my students to read a novel set in New York City.   The novel is called Paradise Travel, and it’s written by Colombian author Jorge Franco.  The story is about two teenage lovers from Medellin, Colombia, who dream about a new life in the Big Apple.  I don’t think they know what it means to journey or live in one of the largest and dynamic cities on this planet, but they know this:  If you can “make it there, you can make it anywhere…”  For Reina and Marlon, there is no Plan B; they do whatever it takes to make their dream happen.     I probably didn’t think of this at the time, but few of my students know much of the Big Apple.  I haven’t been there in more than forty years. So, I ask my students to research NYC  ideas, events, culture,  historical figures, famous architecture – anything that will get the ball rolling.  The more they know about New York City, the more they will connect with the main characters. In my summer session, I tried to push one of my students towards Barbara Streisand.  I said, "She’s 100 times bigger than Taylor Swift"  I think I overdid it. That was Abstract. How is that even possible?  In the minds of young people today,  who can be bigger than Taylor Swift?  I believe this student went in her own directions and instead chose to write about Ella Fitzgerald.

On my shelves here in Mexicali, I keep my Nick Hornby books close.  With my subscription to Believer Magazine, I was gifted a book of his published columns, written for his time working out of the Believer office in Las Vegas. In December 2019/January 2020, I saw he had read Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show. He also read a book by famed journalist Susan Orlean about a Hollywood movie star, who happened to be a dog: Rin Tin Tin – and the story behind the legendary jazz great, Duke Ellington.  As soon as I’m done writing this, I think I will purchase Susan Orlean, for I’ve read two or three other of her books based on Nick’s recommendations and loved them all.  I know Duke Ellington from reading about New York City Jazz.  One of his most famous compositions is titled “Take the A Train.”  I’m thinking about reading for my students here.  The Duke is not Barbara Streisand, but who is?

Elvis in Vegas is not the best book I’ve read about The King, but I like the focus on a place in time that few have written about.  Not only do we get our Elvis fix, author Richard Zoglin pulls back the curtain to much of the history and culture that grew out of the Nevada desert in the fifties and sixties. I’m not writing a book report here.  Not only did the author write about Elvis, he spent considerable time delving into the Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Dino Martin, Sammie Davis Jr. – and other top acts that were attracted by the Glitz and Glamour of Las Vegas. I liked reading about  the the comedians like Don Rickles, Shecky Greene, Richard Pryor, that served it up as opening acts.  Elvis actually BOMBED his first time in Vegas.  He was fresh off the media mayhem produced from Lousiana Hayride and national television appearances, but the Vegas crowd – the adult gamblers – weren't ready for him.  They BOOED him off the stage.  ( Barbara Streisand, his opening act, fared WORSE.)  Like I told you, this book is about the GROWTH of the entertaiment industry in Vegas.  Elvis and Babs would soon enough become King and Queen.  There were plenty of Mob stories: Bugsy Siegel, Howard Hughes.   When the Mob threatened to remove Howard Hughes from his exclusive VIP suite at the Desert Inn, for he was not spending/losing enough in their casinos, Hughes instead bought the hotel.  Next, the Frontier, then the Sahara. Elvis finally married Priscilla in Vegas in 1967.  To avoid the hassle of the intense press coverage of this event, Elvis drove his wife-to-be to Frank Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs.  Hundreds of writers and photographers thought they had scoop, arriving there early in waiting; that is until Elvis and Priscilla hopped on Frank’s private Leer Jet and flew to Vegas in the middle of the night.  No one anticipaed this move. Elvis and Pricilla applied for a marriage license in the Clark County courhouse a 7:00 in the morning. Their small, intimate wedding was held at the Aladin at 9:40.  For Elvis that’s called TCB. Taking Care of Business.  WHAT AN EXCITING TIME!

  Recently, I have been hearing reports about a new Elvis biography. It’s titled titled, The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Shook the World. I have a feeling that I will see this book recommended in an upcoming Nick Hornby column.  Apparently, it debunks much of the myth behind Elvis and  the Colonel.  I know this because I’ve read Peter Guralnick’s super-excellent Elvis bio, Last Train to Memphis.  Peter Guaralnick happens to be the author of The Colonel and the King. In the interviews I’ve heard, he says he had the wrong idea about the Colonel.  Nine or ten years of research on the book has opened up his eyes to the greatness of Tom Parker.  

I only wish Richard Zoglin would have wrote with the same type of depth and detail about a famous meeting backstage at the Hilton Vegas, when Barbara Streisand approached Elvis with an offer to star in her new movie project, A Star is Born. This was 1974, shortly before Elvis would die of a drug overdose.  Barbara saw Elvis as a talented actor and musician who had lived the life portrayed by this story’s main character.  Babs, now a STAR of STARS, certainly would know how to play her part. All his life, Elvis had not dreamt of becoming a King, but of becoming a James Dean, Marlon Brando, or Montgomery Clift.  This was his chance to show the world the actor he really was. In Elvis in Vegas, author Richard Zoglin reports the Colonel nixed the deal – he wanted more money, more screen time, top-billing for his STAR.   That’s right, he wanted Elvis’s name to appear over Barbara’s in the movie’s credits.   Of course, Babs would have none of that.  I mean, if Elvis was the King, she certainly was the Queen.  The talks fizzled.  Eventually Babs chose Kris Kristofferson as her co-star.  In the The Colonel and the King, Peter Guralnick paints a more loving picture of the Colonel.  He tried to protect the image and legacy of his star.  At the time Elvis was a full-blown drug addict.  He was deterioriating rapidly. Two years later, he was found dead in his Graceland bathroom slumped to the side of his toilet. 

Somehow, some way, I hope I can motivate my students to read or write about Elvis or Babs.  In one of my classes we read a sixties novel and write sixties research papers.   When I was a young boy, I read basketball books and more basketball books.  I suppose this is where my personal library began to grow.  I’m not sure what I read yesterday, but I can remember reading about New York City high-school basketball legend Billy Cunningham.  Before he became a nation-wide sensation at North Carolina University, and then a perennial NBA All-Star,  he graduated in the same high-school class as Barbara Streisand.  Much later, when asked if he knew of her in high school, he said something like, “No, but she knew who I was.”   That sounded totally logical to me.  At the time, I thought who could ever be bigger than a New York City basketball legend?   Sixty years later,  I still remember that quote, but Barbara is sui generis.  She is one of a kind.   Bigger than Taylor Swift.  I have been reading ever since.