Napa man archives his reading habit
The trio of old, leatherette-patterned cardboard shoeboxes owned by Gene Osegueda look nothing like a personal treasure. Neither do their contents — several hundred index cards.
But on those nearly 400 3-by-5-inch slips are the blow-by-blow record of a longtime educator’s love of reading deep into old age. Titles, authors and thumbnail summaries track decades of reading by the 87-year-old Napa man.
The light shed by the book cards is now one he hopes to pass on to future students, as he seeks a new home for a trove he hopes will pique the curiosity of younger readers.
The son of a newspaper photo engraver, Osegueda spent three decades teaching and counseling in California and New York, including 16 years as dean of student affairs at Merritt College in his hometown of Oakland. After retiring and then moving to Napa in 1990, he began splitting his time between volunteer work and books “that weren’t textbooks,” he recalled.
Soon after Osegueda moved to Napa, his reading habit led him to start up correspondences with the creators of his favorite novels. When he wrote Gary Jennings about his book “Aztec,” for example, a five-year letter exchange followed in which the author described the years of research plowed into his books. The two remained in touch until Jennings died in 1999.
Another of his correspondence buddies was Dan Brown, but before Brown became famous for writing the international bestseller “The Da Vinci Code.”
To keep track of his reading, Osegueda improvised his own card catalog system.
“Don’t know exactly how I started with these cards,” he said, pointing to his cardboard boxes in a reading room of his Napa retirement home. “But at some point, every time I started on a book, I’d whip out two cards — one for the author and one for the title.”
On the backs of the cards — many scavenged from the Napa library’s old card catalog — are brief accounts of each volume: the title and author, hardcover or paperback binding, a one-sentence summary of its plot.
Aztec Writing System - News
Another of his correspondence buddies was Dan Brown, but before Brown became famous for writing the international bestseller “The Da Vinci Code.” To keep track of his reading, Osegueda improvised his own card catalog system. “Don't know exactly how I
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Aztec Writing System - Bookshelf
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