By Robert McCool
I have been so fortunate in my life so far that I have had opportunities to share my love of books and the written word with the readers of this column on a semi-regular basis.
I began to write for the Icon when founder Fred Steiner asked me to review books that I liked, and I chose those contemporary popular fiction ones that I believed had a quality or message that meant something important to our current time and circumstances. I was lucky to find those books on the new books shelf of my local library, and sometimes I took the suggestions of my fellow book lovers. It was a joy to bring the book alive with my reviews, and I actually managed to read and write about each book in a week's time. That was how much I enjoyed the task.
When the new owner of the Icon took over, she allowed me to keep this column and even encouraged my writing. And the Icon flourishes under her management. I believe that I had more interested readers that followed me then. The support that I received made me want to write better and more relevant reviews than I had ever done before.
