Childhood favorites for Charles Bayless, Management Consultant

Charles Bayless was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1950's but grew up around the world as father's career in the oil business took them to Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya, the UK, and Sweden. Returning to the US his career for twenty years was in management consulting as a Partner at Ernst & Young and then as a Vice President of Capgemini. He is the co-founder of Through the Magic Door and, as might go without saying, an avid reader.

Which books did you read (or were read to you) as a child that you remember best and why?

There were many stories and books but there were a handful that standout in my memory. The Little Engine That Could was certainly one of these and I recall why. I liked the story, but somehow what kept me coming back were the illustrations; all those toys and fruits and handsome engines just captured my young eye. Other picture books included The Night Before Christmas, an edition of a children's illustrated Bible, and a book at my grandparents house about a wild chipmunk. I can't remember the title but it was realistically illustrated and captured the romance and hardness of wildlife in a fashion that frightened, stirred and inspired a small child without frightening him off.

Walter Lord's A Night to Remember, books by Paul Gallico, Jules Verne's Mysterious Island and Ballantine's Coral Island, and Alfred Hitchcock anthologies were favorites at the Independent Reader level. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, The Great Escape, Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, Daphne DuMaurier's short stories were all favorites at more of a Young Adult level.

Which books had the most influence on your thinking and character?

I have got to believe that that illustrated children's Bible has got to be right up there. I have a much greater knowledge of the Bible than I can attribute to adult reading and I think it must have been acquired at that young age.

While I read it only a couple of times and wouldn't necessarily say it was a favorite, I was fascinated by Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and the whole idea of not being bounded by unacknowedged conventions. Also around the Independent Reader level were a whole series of science or reference books: Guiness Book of World Records, Can Pigs Swim?, Time-Life reference books, Horizon Junior Library. There was just a raw pleasure at acquiring interesting information that helped make sense of the world.

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror opened my eyes to how a gifted historian can recreate a world far removed in time. It was also one of those books that make the connection that, no matter that my visceral sense was of the Middle Ages being almost an unimagenably different time, people are people across the ages. You can't underestimate the differences that stand between your life and theirs but you can't deny that there is also a recognizable commonality.

Are there any books related to your profession or calling that you think children ought to consider reading?

I can't really think of any for younger children related to management consulting other than those books about doing science experiments. There is always a solution: it might not be easy, you might not like the choice, but there is an outcome that you can accomplish. Any books on risk or on world history are good foundations for management consulting. There is nothing new under the sun and the more history you have read, the more likely you are to see patterns with the issues and problems clients face to day.

What books are you reading and enjoying today?

I always have twenty or thirty books going at the same time. In the past year I have been on a classic mysteries kick - Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, Georges Simenon, and the like. Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes, and Constant Battles by Steven A. LeBlanc have each been real pleasures to read in the past year but also fascinating for their information and ideas.

Maintaining standards

Those cheery academicians at Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest maintain an archive of past winners for the worst opening sentence.

Ancientscripts.com

Mentioned in the July/August edition of Archaeology Magazine, (which I would recommend to any of you with 10 year olds or older, who are very interested in archaeology), is a site, Ancientscripts.com, with a lot of information nicely, organized. As a ten - twenty year old I was fascinated by language and alphabets. I don't know why I am using the past tense. I still am, other things just crowded in the way. Anyway, neat resources to feed an interest in writing, alphabets and language.

Pseudonym finder

Here's a useful little site for finding the nom-de-plume of an author or, alternatively, the real name.

This guy is good . . .

Minh Le has a blog Bottom Shelf Books giving an alternative view of many of the classics of children's literature. I suspect he will be frequently quoted here.

Frog and Toad are friends who (judging by their clothing) both teach in the Philosophy Department at the University of Vermont.

Well the things you learn. . .

Evaline Ness was the illustrator of Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine for which she won the 1967 Caldecott Medal. It was a popular story with our children when they were younger and I read it many times to them over the years.

What I did not know was that the Ness part of her name was from her marriage to Eliot Ness, of Treasury Department/Al Capone/Untouchables fame. I don't know quite what to make of that, but it is oddly fascinating to me.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Having read the C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia as a child and enjoyed them immensely (one of those stories that take you away from your present reality and then has the courtesy to repeat the favor over several books), I anticipated the release of the movie version in 2005 with some trepidation. Your interaction with a book is often so unique that any movie version has to be a disappointment. Occasionally there are real successes where the new movie carves out its own distinct character but somehow, and often unaccountably, remains true to the source. It is then that you end up with two separate enjoyments, the movie and the book, separate but related.

More often though, the movie is more or less derivative of the original story and then you are left debating about how the weighting of this theme was overdone, how that sub-plot was overlooked altogether, how a secondary character was portrayed inconsistently with your reading of them, etc. Your judgment of the movie becomes a function of the extent to which it is closely correlated or not (Cheaper by the Dozen) to the original book.
You look forward to those occasions when the derivative movie reinforces your reading experience, often serving as the catalyst to go back and re-enjoy the book. You dread when the celluloid rendition besmirches a recollected story by its ham-fisted rendition.
And yet it is a little more complicated than that. I was struck by this last night.
When the Chronicles movie came out a couple of years ago we took all three kids to see it as they had all read and enjoyed the books. The net of the post-viewing discussion was that the filming was beautiful and that while the producers had clearly made the effort to adhere to a pretty nuanced and layered story as closely as possible and had done a fair job of doing so, it was definitely a derivative movie and that the power of the memory of the books would definitely outweigh that of the movie.
Last night the Chronicles were on TV and my daughter very much wanted to see it again and so we re-watched. Nothing in the second viewing changed my assessment from the first. However, I was struck by just how visually powerful some of the scenes were. Lucy stumbling through the closet into Narnia's winter, the lamp post, the Edwardian decorations of Mr. Tumnus' home, the wretchedly drained-of-color forecourt of the White Witches palace, the rich panoply of Aslan's army.
So I end up with the original story line and pleasure from the books intact. That is the memory carried, not the version of the movie. And yet now, in thinking of the parts of the story, there is a visual picture that supplements the reading experience. The producers have rendered a snapshot of those scenes consistent with that which I had created in my head, but theirs has an immediacy and detail which adds one more pleasure.