Confessions of a Bibliophile: Beginnings

If my love for reading were to turn into a tall tale, the balladeers would probably claim I came out of the womb with a book already in hand and glasses firmly plastered on my face.

Having educators as family members, I was never in short supply of books. My cousins and my sister can attest to that fact. When I was little, I would pick out a handful of books for my parents to read to me; however, there was one book I would urge to be read to every single night, and I mean that literally people. It was a spinoff of Disney's Bambi called Bambi Gets Lost.

                                                                 And so it begins

I don't know what it was about this book that I adored it so much, maybe it was all the animal pictures. Anyway, my parents read it to me so much, I pretty much memorized the whole thing, and if my parents would forget a certain passage I would have to call shenanigans on them and tell them to read it right.

Like I said before, besides Bambi, there were a plethora of other books to keep me company: other Disney books (like Pinocchio, Cinderella, Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh), some Sesame Street books, Golden Books (like the Little Red Caboose), and more Dr. Seuss and Berenstein Bears books than you can shake a stick at. My parents would alternate bedtime story time (Mom would read one day, Dad the next).

As I got older, my father taught me how to read, and the first book I can ever remember reading independently was Three Little Pigs.

                                        Today, Three Little Pigs; tomorrow, War and Peace

My father was also the springboard in getting me interested in "real" books. After I had reached a certain age, my father believed I had outgrown reading Dr. Seuss books and such and he read to me books like Charlotte's Web, Beverly Cleary's Ralph and The Motorcycle trilogy, her tales of Ramona Quimby and Harry, Bunnicula, and a children's book of stories from the Old Testament (which really gave me a leg up in CCD class at the time). Dad also introduced me to some classics in literature like Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer, and even though he's not much for fantasy literature or movies, he read to me such fantasy classics as The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, and all seven books of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I'm sure there must have been other books my father read to me, but for the moment, they escape me.

           I'd probably have to say in all honesty, Tom Sawyer and Aslan were probably my first literary  heroes

This probably lasted until I was eleven years old when I decided that I was through with bedtime story time and I would simply read by myself from now on, although at the time, I wasn't as yet the obsessive reader I am today. That would start to occur a few years later, thanks to some colorful vampires, and I'm not talking about the ones who sparkle.
 

Introductions

Greetings blogosphere, my name is Marcus and I have come to invade just a teensy, tiny piece of the interwebs just like so many other bloggers have done. I created this place back in 2008, so I thought it was about bloody time I made an entry here. In this maiden post, I will explain two things: where I came up with the title for this blog, and what will be (hopefully) occuring here.

1. Who is Peter Quince and confessions of a whosit whatsits?

My life has so far been dominated by two passions: theater (both the attending of and acting in (that's the thespian part)) and literature (bibliophile). There's actually a third passion of mine and that's being a major fan of the New York Yankees, but that's a minor passion compared to the other two. Lately, I haven't been a performer in any theatrical productions, I've been more a spectactor. As for the reading, I have probably read close to 500 books in my young lifetime, 91 in the previous year alone.

As for the Peter Quince moniker: one of the last major productions I was in was William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, where I played, you guessed it, Peter Quince, almost twelve years ago. I'll most probably dedicate a fuller article about my remembrances of that show in the near future.

2. What's going to be here?

Pretty much anything I can think of at the time: books I've read, movies I've seen (both in the theaters and DVDs), TV shows (currently showing or the TV shows I have on DVD, and I have a good deal of those), venting/extolling about the Giants and the Yankees, the list goes on and on. I realize this is not an original concept. There are millions upon millions of blogs out there. I'm not trying to be original, I'm just doing this for fun. I can't promise you that I'll post an entry a day. I also might post more than one a day. I'll try to keep my language as PG-13 as possible (note earlier my use of bloody instead of using some less colorful word). More importantly, when talking about books, TV, etc. I WILL MOST LIKELY BE USING SPOILERS. I will try to warn beforehand, but until then, consider this your preliminary warning.

Now that I've covered all the preliminaries, let's try to have some fun here