David Pratt's Blog - Posts Tagged "bob-the-book"
Bob the Book on Kindle
I see that 135 people have put my novel "Bob the Book" on their to-read lists. Wow! I am very excited. Some of you have commented that you would hold off on "Bob" until the Kindle price came down, so I want to make sure you all know that the Kindle is now $5.99. And if you have already read Bob? I have a new and different novel out this month, "Looking After Joey." And perhaps my favorite of all is my short story volume, "My Movie," a sompelling map of my journey and evolution as a gay man. I'll see you in the pages of whichever one(s) you choose! David
What to Curl up With (Part One)
What do you take to a desert island? Say you’re allowed ten books. They should be…what? The ten greatest ever written? Anna Karenina? Remembrance of Things Past? I’d kill myself. Or the ten most inspiring? What inspiration do you need? It’s a desert island! So maybe we want the ten most comforting books. But those might be ones you had as a kid. They would take between three minutes and three hours each to read. Whatever the case – comfort, inspiration or genius – one thing is certain: these would have to be books you could read over and over. Depending on what else there is to do (does this island come with shelter? what’s the food situation?) you will be reading each book once every two weeks for the rest of your life. Here is what I think I would take. Part one.
1.) My Norton Anthology. Kills a couple hundred birds with one stone, dunnit? And to be clear, it would indeed have to be my Norton Anthology, the one I used in Introduction to English Literature at Hamilton College in the fall of 1976. The one with which I learned to read. And quite possibly write. In high school, the teachers’ questions ran to, “Why does Atticus mean when he says that?” and “Why does Pa Joad do that?” They’re trying to sharpen your mind and mold your character. Fat chance. In my case. But in the big, bright room in Hamilton’s Root Hall, Professor Austin Briggs took Chaucer and Shakespeare and Pope apart, line by line, often word by word, to reveal simply how literature works and what it does. It was my first sustained encounter with poetry, which high schools, at least then, thought students thought was boring, so they avoided it. Then suddenly Beowulf. Suddenly Spenser. Suddenly sonnets. Grown-up stuff with a grown-up purpose. Why had no one told me? I did not write back then, except for assigned papers. But I believe Austin Briggs’s impassioned, witty, detailed exegeses of these writers made me wish secretly to do the same thing, and those exegeses gestated and eventually, well, Bob the Book is not The Faerie Queene, but then, The Faerie Queene is not Bob the Book. At any rate, I am packing my Norton Anthology, complete with the scribblings of a suddenly energized 18-year-old in the margins.
2.) Spenser and Pope are fine. More than fine. But at the end of a long day, you can’t quite sit down by the fire and have a whiskey with those towering and ancient intellects. E. B. White’s essay “Home-coming,” the first in his collection One Man’s Meat, is actually about the end of a long day, a day of driving up Route 1 to North Brookline, Maine, where the Whites had a house and, more importantly, a barn that became the setting for perhaps the greatest work of children’s literature ever. “Home-coming” is witty and sharp-eyed, as is everything by White, and what is more, it calms the soul: sunset along tacky Route 1 and the woods and fields and marshes beyond; the arrival at the empty house; the whiskey by the fire; and a curious and amusing event that suddenly brings a gaggle of neighbors – aka the volunteer fire department -- into White’s parlor. I would happily take just “Home-coming” (yes, the hyphen belongs) to my desert island, but of course I am going to take the whole book. One Man’s Meat also contains such White classics as "Clear Days," "Salt Water Farm," "The Flocks We Watch by Night," "Once More to the Lake" and the lovely "First World War." Life amused White, and it made him anxious, and he is frank about both. Of Route 1 he says, “There is little to do but steer and avoid death.” And so I know I shall have at least one perfect soul mate on my island.
The next installment of my desert island books shall be revealed soon!
1.) My Norton Anthology. Kills a couple hundred birds with one stone, dunnit? And to be clear, it would indeed have to be my Norton Anthology, the one I used in Introduction to English Literature at Hamilton College in the fall of 1976. The one with which I learned to read. And quite possibly write. In high school, the teachers’ questions ran to, “Why does Atticus mean when he says that?” and “Why does Pa Joad do that?” They’re trying to sharpen your mind and mold your character. Fat chance. In my case. But in the big, bright room in Hamilton’s Root Hall, Professor Austin Briggs took Chaucer and Shakespeare and Pope apart, line by line, often word by word, to reveal simply how literature works and what it does. It was my first sustained encounter with poetry, which high schools, at least then, thought students thought was boring, so they avoided it. Then suddenly Beowulf. Suddenly Spenser. Suddenly sonnets. Grown-up stuff with a grown-up purpose. Why had no one told me? I did not write back then, except for assigned papers. But I believe Austin Briggs’s impassioned, witty, detailed exegeses of these writers made me wish secretly to do the same thing, and those exegeses gestated and eventually, well, Bob the Book is not The Faerie Queene, but then, The Faerie Queene is not Bob the Book. At any rate, I am packing my Norton Anthology, complete with the scribblings of a suddenly energized 18-year-old in the margins.
2.) Spenser and Pope are fine. More than fine. But at the end of a long day, you can’t quite sit down by the fire and have a whiskey with those towering and ancient intellects. E. B. White’s essay “Home-coming,” the first in his collection One Man’s Meat, is actually about the end of a long day, a day of driving up Route 1 to North Brookline, Maine, where the Whites had a house and, more importantly, a barn that became the setting for perhaps the greatest work of children’s literature ever. “Home-coming” is witty and sharp-eyed, as is everything by White, and what is more, it calms the soul: sunset along tacky Route 1 and the woods and fields and marshes beyond; the arrival at the empty house; the whiskey by the fire; and a curious and amusing event that suddenly brings a gaggle of neighbors – aka the volunteer fire department -- into White’s parlor. I would happily take just “Home-coming” (yes, the hyphen belongs) to my desert island, but of course I am going to take the whole book. One Man’s Meat also contains such White classics as "Clear Days," "Salt Water Farm," "The Flocks We Watch by Night," "Once More to the Lake" and the lovely "First World War." Life amused White, and it made him anxious, and he is frank about both. Of Route 1 he says, “There is little to do but steer and avoid death.” And so I know I shall have at least one perfect soul mate on my island.
The next installment of my desert island books shall be revealed soon!
