Tag Archives: reading

Encore Excerpt From ‘The Butterfly Tree’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

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A good many readers in response to the column two weeks ago excerpted from my new novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” asked for more. Who am I to argue with taking the day off? And so, from the opening chapter, an encore:

Ka-BOOM!

Thunder exploded, its volume deafening, its lightning flash brilliant as the Biblical bolt that blinded Saul, shooting down from the heavens with the earthshaking power of a million hatchet blows. The blade of electricity cleaved The Black Walnut Tree as effortlessly as a honed hunting knife slicing a stalk of celery.

A life of 231 years ended in a split-second.

The regal tree was sliced cleanly in two, from leafy crown to grassy ground, the splayed halves as identical as a left and right hand. The newly exposed surfaces seemed as if a master cabinetmaker had spent endless hours sanding, varnishing, buffing.

In death The Black Walnut Tree had been a lifesaver, shielding a clan of Roma migrants from being lanced by the thunderbolt. The ensemble, encamped along the riverbank in March 1852, had sought shelter beneath the tree’s colossus canopy—most importantly, Aisha Beswick, who was in labor with her first child. Huddled alongside Tamás, the expectant father, was Dika, Aisha’s mother and a revered fortuneteller.

Half an hour before the fateful lighting strike, as moody clouds roiled ominously darker, darker, closer, closer, Dika bemoaned, on the edge of weeping: “The peril is great for Aisha and the baby. We must fetch a doctor or they shall both die, this I know.”

Without hesitation, Hanzi volunteered for the emergency errand. The teenager, as if a descendant of the wing-footed Greek messenger god Hermes, raced two miles to town with such swiftness that the falling raindrops seemed to miss him.

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Aisha’s contractions became more frequent, more fierce, more worrisome.

The apocalyptic sky was having its own contractions, three-hundred-million-volt flashes of lightning followed by deafening whipcracks.

“Oh, Lord, please watch over my child,” Dika said softly, head bowed, “and keep safe my precious grandbaby.”

Dika’s prayers seemed suddenly answered with Doc’s hasty arrival, but just as he set down his medical bag—

—Ka-BOOM!

The fateful thunderbolt smote The Black Walnut Tree like a mighty swing of Paul Bunyan’s giant axe. Miraculously, no one was killed by the lightning strike, nor injured by the falling twin timbers. All, however, were dumbstruck with fright.

All, except Doc.

“Gentlemen, I need you to hold a blanket overhead—like a tent,” Doc calmly directed the gathering. “We want to keep our expectant mother here as dry and comfortable as possible.”

As this was being done, Doc removed his raincoat and favorite derby hat, dropped to one knee, went to work.

Another wave of contractions washed over Aisha and she wailed loud as a thunderclap.

“Omen bad,” Dika sobbed, staring at the felled tree halves. “Two sunrises this poor child will not live to see.”

Not a believer in prophecies, Doc was deeply concerned nonetheless. His heart raced like Hanzi’s feet had for this was the first baby—the very first—Dr. Lemuel Jamison would endeavor to deliver all by himself.

Only two weeks earlier, Doc had completed a nine-month obstetrics internship at Cincinnati’s Commercial Hospital that was affiliated with The Medical College of Ohio from which he graduated top of his class.

During his internship, Doc delivered countless babies. Always, however, there had been an experienced obstetrician by his side, ready to help—or take over fully—if things turned dicey.

Things were dicey now.

And about to turn dicier.

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Excerpt from “The Butterfly Tree” by Woody Woodburn, BarkingBoxer Press, all rights reserved, now available at Amazon and other online booksellers, and many bookshops. Woody can be contacted at woodywriter@gmail.com.

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Excerpt from ‘The Butterfly Tree’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

“Life imitates art,” Oscar Wilde famously asserted and his words proved eerily accurate a month ago when my 97-year-old father, a surgeon turned patient, was battling cancer to the courageous end.

One night, after Pop’s breathing had grown shallower by the day and more and labored by the hour, I read him the excerpt below from my newly released novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations.”

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“What I want you to promise me,” Doc said—breathe—“is that you’ll grieve only one day for me.” Breathe. “After one day, dry your eyes and focus on always remembering our good times together”—breathe—“and never forgetting how much I love you.”

Tears bathed his twin sons’ cheeks.

“There’s something I never told you”—breathe—“and probably should have,” Doc, now 83, continued weakly, pneumonia’s grip growing strong. With effort he proceeded to share the depths of his long-ago widower’s bereavement and suicide attempt, including the exploding ether bottle that awakened him the night his house burned down. “So you see”—breathe—“you boys saved my life.”

“We had no idea,” said Lemuel.

“We’ll still never say who really started that fire,” Jamis said, impishly.

“I have my suspicion,” Doc retorted, winking intimately at Jay-Jay.

Turning serious again: “As I’ve often told you, try to make each day your masterpiece. Breathe. If you’re successful doing that most days, day after day and week after month after year”—breathe—“when you get to the end of your adventure you’ll have lived a masterpiece life. Breathe. I’ve made some flawed brushstrokes, certainly, but all in all, I’m pleased”—breathe—“with my life’s painting. Yes, I feel happy and fulfilled. My only real regret”—breathe—“is that it’s all passed by so swiftly, in a blink it seems. Breathe. I feel like I did when I was a kid on the pony ride at the fair”—breathe—“I want to go around one more time.”

Jamis leaned over and hugged Doc, embracing his Pops longer than he ever had, and still it was far too brief. Lem, lightly stroking Doc’s left arm, suddenly realized the brushstroke-like birthmark resembled Halley’s Comet—The tail of a comet that Grandma warned us would bring tears, he thought.

Doc slept for most of the next two days, awaking only for short spells—including evening shaves from the town barber, Jonny Gold. Breathing became more labored as his failing lungs slowly filled with drowning fluid. During Connie’s illness long before, and again with Alycia’s not so long ago, Doc lovingly told them it was okay to “let go” rather than suffer. But he found it impossible to grant himself similar merciful permission.

Jamis and Lem gave it instead.

“Keep fighting if it’s for you, Pops,” Jamis said, his tone tender as a requiem. “But if you’re doing it for Lem and me, we’ll be okay—go be with Aly and Connie. We love you beyond all measure.”

“We’ll never forget your love,” Lem whispered, his lips brushing his namesake’s ear.

Doc opened his eyes, blue-grey like the ocean on a cloudy day, and with clear recognition grinned fragilely at Jamis, then at Lem, letting them know he heard their lovely words. His eyelids lowered shut as he squeezed his sons’ hands and whistle-hummed, almost inaudibly, before being gently spirited away.

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When I finished reading, and then echoed the twins’ words with my own, my dad opened his ocean-hued eyes, briefly; smiled, faintly; gave my hand a tender squeeze, lengthily; and death imitated art before my next visit the following day.

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            Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Excerpt from “The Butterfly Tree” by Woody Woodburn, BarkingBoxer Press, all rights reserved, now available at Amazon and other online booksellers and many bookshops. Woody can be contacted at woodywriter@gmail.com.

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‘The Butterfly Tree’ and enchanted Table

by Woody

“The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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A kitchen table, it has long seemed to me, is arguably the most valuable, regardless of monetary worth, piece of furniture in a home.

A fancy hutch, for example, is for displaying things safely out of harm’s way and itself not to be touched; a bed, where dreams are dreamt, is a private retreat out of sight; an heirloom rocking chair soothes mother and child, but is outgrown too soon.

A kitchen table, however, brings families together for years and decades, even lifetimes. It is where the day’s events are touched upon; where dreams are shared, and celebrated when realized; where tears are soothed. At a kitchen table we eat and talk, laugh and play board games, do homework and hobbies, have birthday and holiday parties.

I bet dollars to Sunday morning pancakes if you close your eyes you can see your own kitchen table from childhood, still remember the seating positions of every family member, with memories as warm as fresh-baked cookies.

Author E. A. Bucchianeri wisely observed: “There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia, but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.” At the unpretentious kitchen table of my youth I don’t remember dreaming of writing a novel—but at a similar table in my adulthood, many years later, I would one day sit and write one.

Two bolts of inspiration occurred between these bookend tables. Firstly, Chuck Thomas, my late mentor, friend and predecessor in this space, two decades ago planted the seed by encouraging me to write a novel. Intrigued, I did not feel ready.

But the seed had been planted—a black walnut it would prove to be—and was later given water when a reader of my sports columns, someone I did not even know, sent me an out-of-print novel, a novella actually. “The Snow Goose” by Paul Gallico was instantly, and remains, one of my all-time favorite books.

Importantly, the gift-giving reader—shame of me for losing his name—enclosed a letter praising my writing for having the same heart and emotion as “The Snow Goose” and, echoing Chuck, implored me to try my hand as a novelist. Serendipity added this wink: Mr. Gallico was a sports columnist before leaving the press box to write “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” among other literary gems.

And so I began thinking about writing a novel. Thinking, only, for a good long while. Until a few years ago when serendipity winked again and I happened to catch an episode of “Antiques Roadshow” featuring a handsome kitchen table that had been in a family for a handful of generations. It proved of only modest value, yet naturally was priceless to its owner.

The very next antique profiled was a handmade basket, two centuries old, and my thoughts transported back to a class on Native Americans I took in college. Specifically, I recalled that when deliberating an important matter they consider the impact the decision would have seven generations into the future.

Ka-Boom! A third lightning bolt. I would write about seven generations of a family that have sat around one kitchen table. Moreover, the Table itself would be a character, hence uppercase T. Too, it would have magical qualities, hence its wood must come from an enchanted Tree.

Fittingly, perfectly really, it was upon my current kitchen table this week that I opened a box filled with my newly published debut novel. Next week, an excerpt from “The Butterfly Tree:An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations.”

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            Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Endings Prequel: Opening Sentences

by Woody

Last week’s column featuring some memorable ending sentences I have “collected” while browsing bookstores brought numerous requests for a bookend prequel of opening lines that really knock me out, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield.

Speaking of Holden, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” has this all-time great introductory line: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Speaking of “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Also, from his “A Christmas Carol”: “Marley was dead, to begin with.”

“The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie: “ ‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die.’ ”

Add death, from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

From “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White: “ ‘Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

Short but not so sweet. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker: “You better not never tell nobody but God.” In “Beloved” by Toni Morrison: “124 was spiteful.” And “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury: “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Bookend numbers of note. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” And in “1984” by George Orwell: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Succinct trio. “I am an invisible man,” from “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut: “All this happened, more or less.” And “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller: “It was love at first sight.”

Poetically from “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane: “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”

Speaking of fog, I love this darkly vivid opener from “Fog” by Venturan author Ken McAlpine: “They ran across the sloping deck like marionettes, arms and legs akimbo, and when the waves caught the sailors their arms jerked out, snatching at the night, before they disappeared without a sound.”

Also from the ocean. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” And from “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

“Peter Pan” by J. M. Barrie: “All children, except one, grow up.”

Lastly, the first line of the first book I remember checking out long before I grew up, “Where The Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak: “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him ‘WILD THING!’ and Max said ‘I’LL EAT YOU UP!’ so he was sent to bed without eating anything.”

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Woody’s debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” will be published in late March.

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Murderous Tale in a Lovely Book

by Woody

Few things bring a newspaper newsroom to a total standstill, the common cacophony of keyboards and chatter suddenly swallowed by an eerie hush.

The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion did so when I was a young journalist; as did the two hijacked jetliners slamming into the Twin Towers 15 years later; as, most certainly, President Kennedy’s assassination did long before my writing career began.

When I tell you a similar pall blanketed the old Ventura Star-Free Press newsroom, back when it was on Ralston Street, back on an autumn day in 1987, that not only were voices hushed, but tears rolled, you will understand something truly dreadful had occurred.

Which is why, to be honest, when my colleagues began bemoaning with disbelief that Bob Hope had passed away, I was slightly puzzled. Granted, he was a Hollywood legend and this was sad news, yet the earth-shattering reaction seemed far beyond proportion.

The reason for my confusion was because I had joined the S-FP staff only a month earlier and, due to unfamiliarity, ignorantly misheard who died. The legend suffering a fatal heart attack, at age 69, was Bob Holt, a longtime reporter and columnist who was every bit as beloved as he was talented, a very remarkable twin feat.

In the ensuing days and weeks I perused back issues of the newspaper, kept in endless binders the size of couch cushions, only thicker, reading some of Holt’s columns. It was readily apparent why he was so admired by writers and readers alike.

For nearly four decades Holt wrote for the S-FP, beginning in Sports, later covering hard news, and also penning a slice-of-life column that frequently featured his two girls, Debby and Betsey, oftentimes to their chagrin.

I bring up Bob Holt today because his eldest daughter, Debby Holt Larkin, has written a new book titled “A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of One of California’s Most Notorious Killers.” It is part true-crime story, part memoir through the eyes of 10-year-old Debby in 1958, and fully a page-turner.

Debby will return to her hometown to talk about her book, and about her dad for he is interwoven throughout, at two events: Saturday, Nov. 4, at 10 a.m. inside Ventura City Hall, formerly the courthouse where the salacious trial took place, a trial Bob Holt covered; and Sunday, Nov. 5, at 2 p.m. in E.P. Foster Library.

The poet Robert Frost famously said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” As surely as the account of Olga’s murder, she being a newlywed nurse who was seven-months pregnant, made my eyes spill over, so too did the lovely closing pages with young Debby and her father and two surprise tickets to a Dodgers game, thus proving Mr. Frost correct.

“When it finally came time for me to write that scene, I was very emotional,” Debby shared with me, “which surprised me a little because I’d been thinking about it for so long. I did the draft in one sitting. The words just flowed with tears streaming down my face. By the time I wrote that last sentence, I was sobbing. To this day, I can’t go to a professional baseball game without thinking about my dad at some point – bad call, terrific play. And when they sing ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game,’ it still makes me tear up. He always sang it at the top of his lungs!”

Another song, despite the chronicled tragedy, comes to happily mind page after page: Bob Hope singing, “Thanks for the memory…”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Knocked Out by “The Kudzu Queen”

by Woody

“What really knocks me out,” Holden Caulfield says in “The Catcher in the Rye,”  “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

Mimi Herman’s newly released debut novel, “The Kudzu Queen” (Regal House Publishing), KO’d me so completely I felt like calling her up on the phone even though we have never met.

Instead, I reached out through social media and she graciously responded from her home in North Carolina, where TKQ takes place, albeit in the early 1940s. Before I share some of our correspondence, let me share a little about her 320-page gem.

Lee Smith, a New York Times best-selling author, calls the narrator, 15-year-old Mattie Watson, “the most appealing young heroine since Scout” in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Praise doesn’t come much taller than that.

Rather than being hyperbole, I think the favorable comparison to Scout actually falls short of doing Mattie full justice. In my eyes she even more so reminds me of Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved characters in American literature. Mattie, like Atticus, has a golden heart and a backbone of steel and a conscience like the needle of a compass that always knows where the North Star is. I asked Herman if she agreed with my assessment.

“Mattie is mature for her age,” Herman replied, “so I can see her sounding like Atticus. In my mind, Mattie is what Scout (who is younger) might have grown up to be as an adolescent, and since both Scout and Mattie are in many ways shaped by their admirable parents, I can see the connection. Lately, I’ve been saying that I think Mattie’s parents are what Atticus might have been if he’d been divided into a mother and a father.”

Kudzu, by the way, is a plant that grows a “mile-a-minute” and has been called “the vine that ate the South.” I will not reveal the novel’s plot, other than to say it is a page-turner featuring a protagonist to admire; a handsome charlatan whose evilness outgrows kudzu; families, both tightly knit and torn apart; friendships and feuds; heart and humor; tears and fears; twists and turns.

Beyond the story itself, I fell in love with Herman’s writing. She is an acclaimed poet and this shines through in her long-form writing as she routinely makes a handful of words do the work of a hundred.

“I am fierce in my writing and revising about making sure each word, each sentence, each description, each line of dialogue is perfectly tuned, so it resonates,” Herman shared, noting her original manuscript was a whopping 680 pages.

The result of this poet-like approach is sentences that read like stanzas and paragraphs resembling sonnets. I would have finished reading TKQ in three nights instead of four had I not spent so much time rereading, even re-rereading, so many lovely passages in order to savor them fully.

Here is but one example chosen from dozens of passages I underlined, a single sentence that sums up a hundred previous pages. It is after a terrible fire, after a death too, and after a third tragedy as well: “Danny stayed with Mr. Cullowee, to tend whatever was left to tend on the farm that wasn’t a farm anymore, by the house that had stopped being a house after it ceased to be a home.”

Written by my new friend, Mimi, an author who has not stopped being a poet.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and

Part 2: Books That K.O.’d Me In 2022

by Woody

When a book really knocks me out, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield in the knockout novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” I like to pick up another offering by the same author. This habit served me well in 2022 during my annual quest to read at least one book a week for the calendar year.

Paul Gallico originally knocked me out many years ago with “The Snow Goose,” a novella I have reread umpteen times, and this year I visited him anew with “Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris.” This slim book was so thick with fun that I instantly picked up its sequel, “Mrs. Harris Goes to New York,” which was about twice as long and I think I liked it twice as much simply because I had already fallen in love with the feisty and lovely Mrs. Harris.

“84, Charing Cross Road” by Helene Haff is another absolutely charming little book that will be especially loved by those who adore bookstores. This London “Road” led me to Haff’s “Q’s Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books,” a sequel that is actually a prequel. Both are quite enjoyable, but if you only read one of the two go with “84.”

I’m not sure which I favored more from Antoine Laurain – “The Red Notebook,” a mystery and love story kneaded into one, or “French Rhapsody” about the members of a band that missed out on a record label deal because a letter was lost in the mail only to be delivered 33 years later.

Speaking of music, Jennifer E. Smith’s “The Unsinkable Greta James,” about an indie rock star whose star has fallen and who has had a falling out with her widower father and finds herself on an Alaskan cruise ship with him, was in the running for my favorite book of the year. Three more contenders were “The Violin Conspiracy” by Brendan Slocumb; “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr; and “The River Why” by David James Duncan.

The beautiful writing in “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” by Walter Mosely led me to his imaginative and powerful short story collection “The Awkward Black Man.” Two more short-stories home runs are “The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories” by Jess Walters and “Liberation Day” by George Saunders.

Six more high-fives: “The Bartender’s Tale” by Ivan Doig; “The Cicada Tree,” a debut novel set in the South by Robert Gwaltney; “The Reading List” by Sara Nisha; “Under the Wave at Waimea” by Paul Theroux; and “Catcher’s Keepers” by J.D. Spero, imagining what if Holden Caufield had met John Lennon’s killer before the assassination happened. Also, with the disclaimer that he’s my second cousin, the novel “Cutter” by J. Woodburn Barney.

“What The Wind Knows” by Amy Harmon is an engaging time-travel story anchored around the Irish Revolution in the early 1900s. Speaking of Ireland, I happened upon Irish writer Claire Keegan’s “Small Things Like These” which led me to her “Foster.” Both novellas are very short, and very good, with hints of “David Copperfield.”

The new novel “Demon Copperhead,” meanwhile, carries more than a mere hint in its 560 pages. Naming a title character so closely to Charles’ Dickens’ famous orphan protagonist, with an echoing theme, sets a high bar but Barbara Kingsolver’s masterful storytelling is tall to the task.

Indeed, excluding my daughter Dallas’s two 2022 releases – the YA novel “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” and adult short story collection “How to Make Paper When the World is Ending” – “Demon Copperhead” knocked me out more than any other book in 2022.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Turning The Pages In 2022

by Woody

Amos Bronson Alcott, an 18th century teacher and writer – and, famously, father of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote the very good book “Little Women” – once observed: “That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.”

In 2022, in my annual quest to read a book a week, I have to date triumphantly opened 59 covers with expectation but admittedly closed quite a few without profit. Moreover, because I tend to be as stubborn as a grease stain in my insistence to always finish a book, I closed a fistful feeling a debt of time wasted.

But my hardheadedness has its limits and twice this year I gave up on novels after about 50 pages. After all, as French essayist Joseph Joubert wrote, “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.” Surely the same is true of books, old or new, that are the reading equivalent of scrubbing a floor.

I’m sure you are wondering the titles of the two books I threw the sponge in on. My lips are sealed for I would sooner insult a meal at friend’s home than publicly disparage a book. Most likely the blame lies with my finicky palate, not my hosts’ culinary skills; on my reading tastes, not the author’s storytelling.

Mark Twain was of the same mind, although with exceptions, noting: “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and bat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

Hence, I offer this enthusiastic book blurb for both of the books I abandoned: “Mark Twain would surely compare (title here) to ‘Pride and Prejudice’!”

When I do close a book with profit, I generally will try another one by the author – and, oftentimes, another and another and so on. Indeed, it is a delight to discover a writer you haven’t before read who gives you such a thrill you gobble up the rest of their titles like a literary Pac-Man. Brian Doyle did that for me late last year after reading, and recommending here, “One Long River of Song”. This year I devoured six more of his offerings, all of which I enjoyed, notably the novels “Mink River” and “Martin Marten” and most especially “Chicago: A Novel”

On the other hand, if I feel like swinging a shinbone as Mr. Twain did, I will usually leave the author be. One exception, however, is Elizabeth Strout. Despite being greatly disappointed with “Oliver Kitteridge”, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, I in turn read “My Name is Lucy Barton”, “Olive Again” and “Oh William!” and liked them no better.

I finally concluded Elizabeth Strout is my Twain-ian Jane Austen, a widely popular taste I can’t seem to acquire. This pained me because I’ve seen Strout speak in person and found her extremely engaging.

My wife, however, adores Strout’s writing and for her birthday I gave her Strout’s latest bestseller, “Lucy by the Sea”. One evening, out of curiosity, I took a peek at the opening page…

…and kept turning the pages late into the night, captivated by this COVID-19 tale. Indeed, it is one of my favorite books this year. Next week, I will fill up a short shelf with some more profitable reads.

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There is still time to become an MVP by dropping off new balls (no batteries required!) at Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St., Ventura CA 93003 (weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.); or have online orders shipped to this same address; and I will take it from there.

And please be sure to email me at woodywriter@gmail.com about your gift so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally and thank you in an upcoming column.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Some Books Merit Special Shelves

by Woody

No matter how many books you own, I have a hunch you have one special shelf that holds your most cherished volumes.

For example, I have a lawyer bookcase with glass panels that contains a prized signed statuette of John Wooden, clay hand imprints my son and daughter made in kindergarten, and other such keepsakes. A different shelf within proudly displays 20 moss-green hardcover 1922 editions of Mark Twain’s works and an 1884 printing of “Red-Letter Poems By English Men And Women” with 648 gilt-edged pages featuring a Who’s Who lineup that includes Shakespeare, Byron, Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth), Keats, Donne, Milton, Tennyson and Wordsworth.

Despite their age, none of the above volumes are of great monetary value – yet all 21 are priceless personally because they belonged to my maternal grandfather and are the lone survivors from the inheritance of his vast book collection, the rest having been lost in the Thomas Fire that claimed my father’s home.

Family ties are behind two more special shelves belonging to dear friends of mine.

Kay Giles, easily one of the most well-read people I know, not surprisingly has upwards of 2,000 books in her home – among them 16 volumes that merit their very own top shelf in a prominently displayed bookcase. They are the full collection of Charles Dickens’ works, a special edition circa 1930, handsomely bound in rich walnut-brown leather with gold lettering on the pristine spines.

Most importantly, they belonged to Kay’s paternal grandparents and she calls them her “dearest inheritance.”

“My dad packed them up from his parents’ house in London when he went back there to take care of their affairs after my grandmother died,” Kay remembers, noting she was 16 years old at the time.

Houston Wolf was even younger when his father brought home a set of books that would similarly become dear to him, a 1952 printing of “The Great Books of the Western World”, a whopping 54 volumes that weigh about as much as a grand piano. Humble in appearance with cloth covers in a rainbow of hues – blue, green, red and gold, all faded by time – the books came with an equally modest waist-high wooden bookcase, the middle shelf now sagging slightly under its load.

“I’m so proud to think that I’ve carted these books around with me wherever I’ve moved for nearly forty years,” Houston shares, noting there have been many, many moves. “I’m also proud I never sold them, even in periods of desperation – at least what I considered to be desperation at the time. These books, and the knowledge I knew I’d someday absorb, were my security blanket. As long as I had these books, my life would be okay. I would always have something to live for, if just to protect these books.

“At my very lowest,” he continues, “I was offered $500 for the set. I couldn’t do it. Then the same gentleman then offered me $500 for ONE book from the set – Plotinus, Volume No. 17. I’ll never, ever read Plotinus, probably. I don’t even know who he is. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it to a set of books that deserved to remain intact. So I refused. And I really could have used that $500.”

Here’s the kicker: Houston confesses he hasn’t read any of his beloved books!

“So why do I keep them?” he says. “Pride in having taken care of them all these years. And ambition to someday read them.”

To paraphrase Robert Browning: Ah, a To-Be-Read shelf should exceed one’s grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Intoxicated by Bookstores and Libraries

by Woody

If you are at all like me, books never cease to allure you, delight you, amaze and even intoxicate you.

I would rather spend time in a bookstore than a museum, and I dearly love museums, which may explain why I especially adore used-books bookstores – and public libraries, too – because they are like bibliophilic museums, only better, because you are allowed to handle the old artifacts on display.

Yes, some of the best bookstores are second-hand museums, and the best of these remind me of Ventura’s long defunct All Pro Sporting Goods that was owned by legendary Bob Tuttle. It was a hole-in-the wall, barely bigger than a walk-in closet, yet like Mary Poppins’ magical carpetbag anything you were looking for could be found within.

Indeed, in the 1970s you might go into All-Pro to buy basketball sneakers and leave also with a new-but-blemished baseball mitt from the bargain bin in the same manner one might today be interested in a newly released novel at Ventura’s beloved Bank of Books and in addition wind up buying a second-hand copy of a classic.

There is something special about old books and the perfume they release – a trace of mustiness and earthiness, with a hint of vanilla mixed in – when you turn the pages, foxed and yellowing and slightly brittle from age. Used-books bookstores smell sweeter than a nursery greenhouse.

However, I also find delight in new books and independent bookstores where the staff can ask you a few questions and then give you a perfect recommendation that, to borrow from Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”, really knocks you out. Furthermore, indie shops often have reading nooks and dog-eared couches that invite you to pleasantly linger a while. Timbre Books in Ventura and The Bookworm in Camarillo are two of my favorite cozy bookshops.

The breathtaking library at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Too, I love libraries. The most beautiful library I have ever been inside is at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, a cathedral of the printed page where the priceless Book of Kells, dating back to 800 A.D., resides. When Jorge Luis Borges said, “I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library,” I think he had this Trinity College library in mind.

I think any library is a slice of Paradise. This includes home libraries, whether they contain thousands of volumes or merely a dozen cherished favorites. Growing up, our home library was actually a small bedroom, but very tall, with two opposing walls featuring white-painted pine bookshelves that rose like mountains from the floor to the 12-foot ceiling.

These Twin Peaks were as beautiful as any mosaic in an art museum. Instead of ceramic tiles, or stones, or sea glass, the medium was book spines. Thin spines and thick tomes; tall spines, short ones; spines in rainbow hues and earth tones. Most of the spines were shelved vertically, but some were stacked horizontally. There were leather spines as pristine as shoes polished for church, others dulled by age and creased from use. There were clothbound spines, paperback spines, spines covered by glossy dust jackets. There were new-looking old spines and old-looking new ones. Some spines had fancy gilt lettering while others had titles and authors printed in inks of every color, in myriad fonts.

Twin Peaks had too many books to read in ten lifetimes, but that was fine. As the poet Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or else what’s a heaven for?”

Next week: Two of my friends and the most cherished books in their home slices of heaven.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com