Woody’s debut novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.
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“What’s your favorite book?” I was asked the other day, a simple question that is calculus-difficult to answer.
Hemming a moment, I finally replied I would need to think about it. Now I have, long and happily, retreating a lifetime into memory back to my first favorite book that I checked out of the library myself, at age 5, “Where The Wild Things Are,” and then browsing forward through a hundred books that each merit a color in my rainbow of all-time favorites.
Scarlet or violet or gold or…?
“The Old Man and the Sea” or “The Grapes of Wrath” or…?
I decided to reframe the conundrum to: What is my favorite book I own? My answer, without question, will surprise you.
Let me begin by sharing a handful of contenders that share a shelf of honor in my Favorite Books Bookcase. This includes the full collection – three novels, four short story collections, one children’s book – by my all-time favorite writer, with no apologies to John Steinbeck: my daughter, Dallas.
Proving truth in the aphorism to not judge a book by its cover, monetarily the most valuable book I own has a hardback front and back that only a mother – or perhaps great-great-grandmother – could love, for it looks like gaudy red-pink-gold-green-and-white patterned wallpaper from the 19th Century. The spine, however, of rich brown leather with gilt lettering tells a different tale: “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It is a first edition, second issue (with a few corrections) published in 1885.
Ol’ Huck is not the oldest book on my special shelf. That honor, by a mere year, goes to a poetry collection titled “Red Letter Poems.” It is a handsome illustrated edition with a white leather cover protecting 647 gilt-edged pages, but its true value is in having been passed down on my mother’s side of the family.
And yet the favorite book of poetry I own is small and slim, at just 20 pages, with a cover that looks like it was once left outside through a full winter. No matter, “From Snow To Snow” by Robert Frost is dear to me because a college class studying the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner’s works partially inspired me to become a writer. Further making this 1936 first edition, first printing, all the more dear is the pencil signature inside, dark and clear, albeit a little shaky, in the author’s hand.
Nonetheless, my most-prized Pulitzer honoree’s signature is on the title page of “The Sporting World of Jim Murray” – “Keep swinging! Jim Murray” he penned – that I found in a used bookstore in Twentynine Palms for all of $6.50 according to the penciled price inside the cover. That was in 1982, my rookie year in journalism, and a few years before I would meet my sportswriting hero in person in a press box.
Even more precious, even though it is unsigned, is a 1936 edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus of English Language In Dictionary Form.” The dirty-red, well-worn cloth cover is nothing to look at – until you take a closer look. In the lower right corner, imprinted in small gilt letters, it reads JIM MURRAY and was gifted to him by Roget’s.
Making this Thesaurus more cherished – also: loved, beloved, precious, special – is that Jim’s widow gifted it to me in honor of his and my friendship.
Indeed, being gifts is a theme that makes a handful more books in my Favorite Books Bookcase truly priceless to me – none more so than my surprising answer as my No. 1 fave, which I will reveal in this space next week.
Jim Parker, my former longtime colleague in The Star sports department, lived up to his journalistic nickname “Swami” by peering deeply into his crystal ball and donating two basketballs seven months before my column ran kicking off “Woody’s Annual Holiday Sports Ball Drive.”
