In fourth and fifth grade, I refused to read books.  Almost without exception (I think I might have half-assedly skimmed a Matt Christopher novel or two).  Every book report type assignment was a work of imagination and imagination alone.  I'd look at the picture on a book's front cover.  I'd read the notes on the back cover.  I'd flip through and remember chapter titles.  I'd read the first and last few pages.  And I'd make the rest up.

I think.  That's how I remember it anyway.  Which also might be a work of my imagination.

But, regardless, in sixth grade, everything, whatever that was, changed.

I read Jurassic Park, on my own, for fun, and I loved every word of it.

I loved it so much I started reading.  I think Andromeda Strain came next.  Then maybe Rising Sun.  And Sphere.  And The Great Train Robbery. 

And books by other authors as well.  Catch-22, eventually.  Then it was ON.  I'd had my next big reading epiphany: that the best literature didn't have to connect in some way to dinosaurs. 

And then came the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test epiphany: that journalism could be literature. 

And then Ken Kesey.  And Borges.  And Vonnegut.  And Hunter S. Thompson.  And Baldwin.  And Nabokov.  And now Steinbeck.  Epiphanies every one of them.  Epiphanies tracing back to Jurassic Park.

Michael Crichton was a strange and controversial and fascinating guy.  And he died day before yesterday. 

He taught me to read, and I wish I could have thanked him in person for that.