What is this?
This is my sandbox to play in with the things I love—books, Folio: Seattle, bookish things, lists, writings, etc. Anything that hits my eclectic mind and I want to share. Right now, this is still in play stage.
Review: The Book That Changed My Life
Coady, Roxanne J., and Joy Johannessen, editors. _The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them_. Gotham Books, 2007.
The Book That Changed My Life is a selection of 71 short essays by authors describing the one book that changed their life. The book was edited by Roxanne J. Coady & Joy Johannessen and published in 2006 to raise money for Read to Grow Foundation.
Coady is the owner of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Connecticut (still open!) and was awarded the Bookseller of the Year in 1995. Johannessen is an editor that has worked with the likes of Harold Bloom, Michael Cunningham, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
I’m always looking for the perfect book about books. I recently read My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Bookstores. The focus, though, was on bookstores and not the books. It was also written by celebrity authors and occasionally an author would slip a favorite title in. I liked seeing my favorite stores like Third Place Books and Powell’s Books written up but usually, the author wrote about their own readings. A fine book but not as good as The Book That Changed My Life.
I also recently read Seattle City of Literature: Reflections from a Community of Writers edited by Ryan Boudinot. I also enjoyed this book because I came away with a long list of Seattle area writers, but again I often had to dig for those recommendations as they weren't the center of the book. I will say this is a wonderful book for seeing all that this region of readers has to offer. You want books, poetry, zines, graphic novels, authors, writers…we’re all here sitting in the gloom of a rainy day reading and writing away. Seattle is even designated as a UNESCO City of Literature.
The Book That Changed My Life (which I found on the shelves at Folio: Seattle) was the golden ticket, the shoe that fit, and the just-right porridge. This is exactly what I was looking for. Here is my favorite bon vivant and Vanity Fair trial watcher Dominick Dunne telling me that Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now was an influence for him, "I didn't want it to end. It showed a panorama of class, wealth, power, snobbery, social climbing, advantageous marrying, gambling away family fortunes, all set in a world of dinner parties, balls, men's clubs, where the divine and the despicable mix." Now I want to go back and read The Two Mrs. Grenvilles by Dunne and keep exploring Trollope. I finished my first, Doctor Thorne not a week ago and I get it, Dunne. This is the whole world in a book.
Tracy Kidder, nonfiction author of The Soul of the New Machine, chose Ernest Hemingway’s Collected Stories. Kidder wrote of discovering Hemingway and being introduced to the idea of "the writer himself as hero" and how Hemingway's prose made Kidder believe that the writing part of being a writer was the easy part. Kidder made a career of breaking down difficult things like computers into something understandable. Kidder’s works embrace the lesson he learned from Hemingway.
Frank McCourt author of Angela’s Ashes tells of recovering from typhoid in the hospital as a child and discovering his first bit of Shakespeare in an English history book given to him by another patient. The history book was a quote from Catherine to Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII:
“I do believe, induced by potent circumstances
That though art mine enemy.”
McCourt writes, "I don't know what it means and I don't care because it's Shakespeare and it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words. If I had a whole book of Shakespeare they could keep me in a hospital for a year."
There are at least 68 more recommendations. Some authors managed to fit in an extra recommendation as well. You'll find Harold Bloom, Sebastian Junger, Alice Hoffman, Patricia Cornwell, Doris Kearns, Kate Atkinson, and others. In the back of the book, the editors also included their own recommendation lists.
I borrowed the book but I’ll be locating a permanent copy for my own collection.
Reviews and Articles I recommend
I reread Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence recently and am determing which one is next. This month Penguin is publishing a new edition of The Custom of the Country with an introduction by Sophia Coppola. Sarah Blackwood has an interesting review of the book The Custom of the Country and some insights from past critics over at The Paris Review blog. The post asks if The Custom of the Country is a feminist text. With Edith Wharton the answer is complicated.