This month's "Cover to Cover" interview is with John Goray. John was born in Old Town, Chicago, and raised in Somers, Wiscon-sin, where he attended a two-room schoolhouse and later spent 10 years at the University of Wisconsin. By his early 20s, John had held 60 jobs, from picking worms and cutting corn to being a photographer in San Francisco. In Monroe, he has devoted himself to woodworking, enjoying retirement and spending time with his family.

Growing up, John's father encouraged his love of reading. "He would take me along to second-hand bookstores and let me fill beer crate-sized boxes with pretty much all the books I wanted - titles such as "Dave Dawson with the R.A.F" by Robert Sidney Brown or the "Aeroplane Boys" series by Ashton Lamar.

While still a voracious reader - he currently has 260 audiobooks in his iTunes reader - John has macular degeneration, necessitating him "as a person with serious vision problems to adapt to the possibilities afforded by the brave new world of technology." We sat down with John recently to talk with him about his life with books.



What are you reading now?

"The American Revolution of 1800" by Dan Sisson. I'm also reading Alexander Hamilton's biography by Ron Chernov, "The Assassin" by Clive Cussler, "Acceptance" by Jeff VanderMeer, and "Idoru" by William Gibson. I tend to read several books at the same time.



What book inspires you?

Recently, "The Good Lord Bird," by James McBride. It's about John Brown and his revolution. I've always known the story, but I knew it only in a very sketchy way and the novel takes you deep into his thinking and the context of his revolution. I had no idea he had such big plans or would have taken them so far. It's one of those books that make you feel that this is a great country and we can adapt to encompass all sorts of strange people and situations and ideas. There was a trial a long time ago - I used to have a clipping on my refrigerator - where an orthodontist was taken to court. His medical credentials were being challenged because he believed in aliens. The court ruled in his favor. They said, "If he's an effective orthodontist, it doesn't matter if he believes in aliens." I found that inspirational.

"No Ordinary Time," Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Franklin Roosevelt was a truly inspirational book because it laid down a context in which real change took place in this country on a scale that was almost unbelievable. To see how the parts came together and the effect of it was pretty amazing.



What book did you read as a child that you have the fondest memories of today?

It would be "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's also been published as "Against the Fall of Night."

Another childhood favorite was "The Wizard of Oz." And I had a long affection with "Tom Swift" novels. This was the original Tom Swift who used an electric runabout and electric motorboat and things like that. It was World War I-era science.



Did you own your books as a child?

I had a set of military filing cabinets that I could put the paperbacks into the drawers. I had something like 7,000 volumes as a child and I had them largely alphabetized. I was particularly in love with Ace Doubles, where you would get two science fiction novels in the same volume for 35 cents. I remember one in particular - "Conan the Conqueror," paired with "The Sword of Rhiannon" on the other side. That was fun.



If you could be a character in a book, who would you be?

Oh, probably Don Quixote. I would love to be on a horse running around tilting at windmills. Sounds like great fun.



Is there a book you were disappointed in?

I was very disappointed when the whole genre of science fiction became infected with fantasy - swords and sorcery and that sort of thing, even though I love "The Fellowship of the Rings" and the C.S. Lewis books. The effect on science fiction was pretty detrimental overall. Science fiction used to be based on science; and to include magic in the same context seems very disappointing. I would rather keep the two genres cleanly separated.



Is there a really popular book you thought was terrible?

I generally don't care for contemporary fiction, starting at the time of (William) Faulkner and that era. The focus on relations rather than ideas, I think, is something that I want to move away from. Some stories manage to incorporate both - John Irving, for instance - but, for contemporary fiction, I'm not that happy with what is considered good literature today for the most part. I generally don't read the Tom McCarthys and the John Grishams.

I know that I'm happy to try anything once. During my senior year in high school, I used to kill all sorts of time. I found a list of 200 books you were supposed to read, and I started reading them all.



If you were stranded on a desert island, what single book would you want?

(Without hesitation) "The Year of the Flood," by Margaret Atwood. It's the greatest science fiction novel of the 21st century, let's put it that way. It's also available in audio, and that makes a difference. As I had to move away from text as my eyes got worse, there are a whole lot of things that I would have read in text form that are not available as audiobooks.

So I had to change my reading habits. Where I might have read about medieval mysticism or alchemy in text, now it's American history. That is a good place to put my focus. There's a lot of high quality material on the subject. It is interesting, and I avoided it for most of my life. Science fiction has a lot of audio versions, as well.

How has audio changed your

reading

experience?

It's really difficult to describe the difference. I have heard other people describe the difference effectively, and I do agree with their descriptions; but I find that if I'm really enjoying a book or think it's important, as I miss sections, I'll go back and play them over again, so that I get whatever the idea was or the storyline. After finishing an audiobook, I usually find that I know it better than if I had read it, if it's a book I've enjoyed. If I don't care, I'll fall asleep for whole sections. If it's a simple plot, I can just pick it up again, maybe shaving 10 hours off of a 30-hour book.

The (audiobook) reader is hugely important. I'm lucky that I have the NLS (National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) and Audible as sources. Sometimes the commercial version is not particular good, and the NLS is excellen t. And sometimes it goes the other way. Usually the NLS has good readers. Sometimes science fiction books that I would have read in text, I can't stand as audiobooks. It may be partly because the book is very poorly written. In text, you can skip the lack of character development and dramatic development and just get to the ideas. Now I can't do that. I look for a better quality story and character development.

The tools that are available to people with vision problems are just remarkable these days. I've been fortunate that as my vision has deteriorated, they are making reading tools that are improving constantly. Right now is an amazing time for people who are blind or have serious vision problems, because of the amount of independence and access to information we have is remarkable.