{"id":10,"date":"2005-05-08T20:13:12","date_gmt":"2005-05-09T03:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2005-05-09T08:56:31","modified_gmt":"2005-05-09T15:56:31","slug":"book-me-danno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Book Me, Danno"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had hoped to get some reading done this weekend, but I did not make much of a dent — how could I when I have a stack of books awaiting me in every room of the house. I am serving a self-imposed lifetime sentence as a reader, and despite the fact that I am a relatively fast reader, the piles seem to multiply as I discover more memoirs and narrative nonfiction tales that intrigue me. Perhaps I will post a list of all the titles (an idea borrowed from The Millions<\/a>‘ reading queue<\/em>). That will take some time to compile, but for starters, and in no particular order, I’m looking at:<\/p>\n

  • Pull Me Up: A Memoir<\/em> – Dan Barry<\/li>\n
  • Living With Jazz: A Reader<\/em> – Dan Morgenstern<\/li>\n
  • Book Ends: Two Women, One Enduring Friendship<\/em> – Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine Stern<\/li>\n
  • Getting Personal<\/em> – Phillip Lopate<\/li>\n
  • The Devil in the White City<\/em> – Erik Larsen<\/li>\n
  • Positively 4th Street<\/em> – David Hajdu<\/li>\n

    These are in addition to All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life<\/em> by Loren Eiseley, which I just picked up from the library on the emphatic recommendation of a friend, and The Everlasting Stream<\/em>, a beautifully written memoir by Walt Harrington that I began reading last night. The Eiseley book looks to be intriguing, though perhaps a bit dark; but it’s too soon to tell. Here’s the beginning of the second paragraph — <\/p>\n

    Make no mistake. Everything in the mind is in rat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s country. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t die. They are merely carried, these disparate memories, back and forth in the desert of a billion neurons, set down, picked up, and dropped again by mental pack rats. Nothing perishes, it is merely lost till a surgeon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s electrode starts the music of an old player piano whose scrolls are dust. Or you yourself do it, tossing in the restless nights, or even in the day on a strange street when a hurdy-gurdy plays. Nothing is lost, but it can never be again as it was. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On the surface, Harrington’s memoir is about hunting. Being an animal lover, this is not something I wish to explore even from a distance, let alone ‘witness’ in the intimate detail for which Harrington is noted, but it’s the details that draw me in – that, plus the author’s self-awareness and his promise of a larger story — <\/p>\n

    My story is about: Alex, Bobby, Lewis, and Carl; my father, my son, and myself; rabbits, dogs, and shotguns; flora and fauna; blood and death; guilt and responsibility; ambition, achievement, and satisfaction; affection of the old rugged male as opposed to the modern sensitive male; friends as family; conversation as ceremony and affirmation not therapy and revelation; pristine moments; and, most of all, memory–the memory of it all told and retold, sharpened like a good knife blade, until the minutiae of living becomes the meaning of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Despite my quest to get these books read, I do hate it when a book I’m really enjoying ends. And I suspect that The Everlasting Stream<\/em> will be a compelling page-turner for me and so will not last as long as I would like. Still, it will be good to check one more off my everlasting list. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I had hoped to get some reading done this weekend, but I did not make much of a dent — how could I when I have a stack of books awaiting me in every room of the house. I am serving a self-imposed lifetime sentence as a reader, and despite the fact that I am … Continue reading “Book Me, Danno”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}