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Monday, September 11, 2017

#59 - A Reader's Book of Days - Tom Nissley



Title:  A Reader’s Book of Days
Author:  Tom Nissley
Illustrations:  Joanna Neborsky
Genre:   Non-fiction  809.9339
Publisher/Date:  W. W. Norton/2014
Dates read:   1/1/17 – 9/11/17
IBSN:  978-0-393-23961-1

Sub-titled:  True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year. 

Mr. Nissley has done a wonderful job of recording minutia in this read.   Like he says you can read it cover-to-cover or start with your birthdate, like he did, or open at random or seek out your favorite names in the index.  I did a combination of all of these trying at first to read each date as it occurred on the calendar.  Then I fast forwarded and read a number of days at once.  It’s fun to wallow in the obscurity of the facts.  For example, did you know that Harper Lee was given, as a gift, money and the wherewithal to write a book and that her first choices for To Kill a Mockingbird (that book) were Go Set a Watchman and Atticus.    

Tom’s research goes back to before St. Augustine who in 387 invented the modern autobiography with his Confessions.   On June 18, 1982, at age seventy in Ossining, New York; age eighty in Franklin Park, New Jersey; and age ninety in New York City, respectively, John Cheever, Granville Hicks, and Djuna Barnes died.  Another obscurity is recorded on July 7, 1938, when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter, Scotty, with lots of reading advice that reading Sister Carrie is as easy reading as a True Confession. 

Each month begins with an essay about the month.  He asks “(But) is August august?”  Then he recommends certain books to read for the month.  This is my second year in reading or listening to these suggestions.  I usually like to listen to the selection so go through the public library’s inventory looking, first for it on compact disc.  It’s almost time to decide what I’ll enjoy in 2018.  I’m thinking Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum for next September.  Some of his monthly seven or eight mini-blurbs I’ve already read, such as The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (September) and Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (October) and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (November.)

Each day starts with a couple births.  March 8 -- 1931 John McPhee (Coming into the Country, Oranges), Princeton N. J. 
And deaths.  January 28 -- W. B. Yeats (The Tower, “The Second Coming”), 73, Menton, France
July 10 -- 1993 Ruth Krauss (A Hole Is to Dig, The Carrot Seed), 91, Westport, Conn.

The small sketches are delightfully done by Joanna Neborsky.

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