Yes, Drew can read.

Someone asked me yesterday, “Andy, what is your favorite book?”

I gave a few titles of books that I enjoy. But the true answer to that question is “whatever book I am currently reading.”

I love to read. I am always in the middle of a great book! I read at home, at work, in my truck, on planes, at coffee shops, outside of coffee shops, in the park, on the beach . . . I love to read.

I just finished reading Mississippi Sissy, by Kevin Sessums. His memoir of growing up in the American South is an amazing story of strength and honesty in a culture that is less forgiving. Sessums provides a narrative that needs to be heard.

Another favorite book that I have read a few times is John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Every character in this book is painted brilliantly. No detail is withheld. I happened upon this book by accident. I was a sophomore in high school and on vacation with my parents. We left Florida and were headed up the coast to Virginia when we stopped in Savannah for a few days. The movie adaptation of the book had just come out, and Savannah was all abuzz with excitement. I picked up the book, but I didn’t read it for about a year. While in Savannah I used my sophomoric ability of looking well beyond my years to enjoy some night life. Unbeknownst to me until I read the book, that night I met the Lady Chablis.

I do indeed judge a book by its cover. One of my favorite book selection methods is to walk into the fiction section and locate a book that is askew in the shelf, or perhaps one that is turned outward with the cover facing front. The latest book I found placed cockeyed on the shelf was Meg Rosoff’s What I Was. Set in the 1960s at an English boarding school, this novel chronicles an unlikely friendship between two youths, and a scandal that shatters the idyll that has shielded and nurtured their relationship.

Great Big Small Things is a book that changed my life. It is a biography about a small college football coach. My college. I never had the opportunity to meet Coach Fred Selfe, but this book written by former player Dale McGlothlin is a moving tribute to a man who touched the lives of hundreds upon hundreds (no one was cut from the team) of young men from across the country. While I never met him, I did live in his house for two of my years at Emory & Henry College.

Those are just a few of my favorite books. Perhaps I’ll share more in the future. What are some of your favorite books?