HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – News 19 Anchor Emeritus, Steve Johnson, and News 19 Evening Anchor, Greg Screws, have a lot in common. Aside from being pillars in the Tennessee Valley news world, they’re also sports guys. They each got their start in television as sports reporters. Their deepest connection, however, lies in something outside of work: books.
“I remember when I was a kid learning how to read. Every chance I got in class, I was reading,” Johnson said.
Both of Screws’ parents were educators. He said when it came to books, they never held back on giving him the cash he needed to buy a new read.
“I remember the bookmobile coming. I remember standing in the ditch in front of Highway 36, waiting for the bookmobile to show up,” Screws said.
Over the 18 years that Screws and Johnson worked together, they kind of formed a two-man book club of sorts.
“He’s lording over me the fact that he’s read Moby Dick and I haven’t,” Johnson joked.
They talk on the phone daily, and debates about the classics, as well as new authors, regularly fill that time.
“We’re lovers of language and words and, [as TV anchors], we know you don’t use a big word if a little word will work, but sometimes a big word used correctly, and in the right place is great,” Jonson said.
Screws agreed, saying the biggest discussion almost always comes from the way a sentence in a book either is reading is written.
“In so many of these great books, there’s just something that never leaves you and I think that’s where the discussion started,” Screws said. “Writing is just big emotional brush strokes. Sometimes, it’s a gut punch.”
For the first time, Johnson and Screws will take that discussion public, at “A Life in Reading” at Snail on the Wall in Huntsville’s Five Points neighborhood.
“Steve’s got some stuff he wants to read. I’ve got a couple stories that I want to tell,” Screws said. “I do think there will be an opportunity for the crowd to go, ‘oh, what did you think about this? Why do you like that? I don’t like that.’”
They’ll discuss some of their favorite writers and their styles.
“Richard Ford’s a guy I feel like you have to limber up to read, and then at a certain point you go, ‘oh there’s the payoff!’” Screws said.
Sometimes, however, it’s not about the words in the books at all, but rather the feeling they leave with the reader.
“There’s one book that I consider the best book I’ve read in the last decade. I can’t remember a single line,” Johnson said.
Each said they’ve been looking forward to the event for a long time.
“To go in somewhere and talk about books with people who read books, I mean, that’s as good as it gets,” Screws said.
“This is one of those things where both of us think, ‘I can’t believe they’re letting us do this!’” Johnson said.
“A Life in Reading” is happening on Wednesday, October 22, at 6:00 p.m. at Snail on the Wall. It’s located at 816 Wellman Avenue. Tickets are $10. For anyone who purchases a ticket then buys a book, they get $10 off the order. To learn more, click here.
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