WHEN THE READING LIGHT WENT ON

Steve Blackwood, who plays Bart on “Days of Our Lives” and is a jazz singer with Chartmaker Records:

I fell in love with reading when I was just a little kid, during my elementary school days. I got hooked on the classics. I started off by reading “Robin Hood.” I liked it so much that I kept taking out books from the library. I’d say to my mom, “Treasure Island.” Is that a classic? “Ivanhoe.” Is that a classic? I wouldn’t read them unless she certified that, yes, they were classics. Like “Kidnapped,” by Robert Louis Stevenson. They seemed to be the best books. My imagination was unleashed when I read these.

The other kids were reading sports books, car books. So I also loved to read the biographies of sports heroes, like my hero Al Kaline for the Detroit Tigers.

So I’m still a sucker for the classics. I’ve read most of Tolstoy, “War and Peace” twice--because, to paraphrase Hemingway, he writes true sentences.

But I’m also a sucker for Hollywood biographies, which I read for relaxation. Some of my favorites have been about Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart and Dean Martin. Any books circa the 1960s or the Rat Pack era.