Booked Up, in 2021--part one

"If a book's not worth reading more than once, why keep it?"

                                                                           --Terry Clark, 2021

Some of my 2021 reading, 

 I thought that as  another  year goes "into the books," in that old cliche. For me,  it's not just a cliche. While we always seem to look back, as well as hoping for the future, especially in these years of the plague, I also turn back to the books that helped me survive.

There have been 54 of them this year, 27 in the first half, and 28 as of today, six of which were reread.

First, here are the genres I read, second half, first half:

• Non-fiction--13, 8--21.
• Fiction--7, 3--10
• Poetry--4, 6--10
• Art--3, 4--7

What did I reread?

1.  The Blessing Way, Tony Hillerman, an Okie's first novel,  first edition, inscribed to his friend Carter Bradley, Purchased at an SPJ silent auction a few years ago. Fiction
2. Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon, a creativity dynamo, whose weekly email newsletters and books expand the mind and spirit. https:austinkleon.com Art
3. Show Your Work, Kleon. Art
4. A River Runs Through It, Norman Mclean, heavily marked up and underlined from our previous readings. Fiction
5. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Reflections on 60 and beyond, Larry McMurtry, who died this year, first edition, signed to me at his bookstores, "Booked Up, " Archer City, leading a UCO student trip, 1999.  He soon quit signing books there. I also bought a Booked Up coffee cup there. You can see it at the top of the photo. He quit selling those at the bookstore too. In the past few years he began selling most of the 200,000 books in his several buildings. Non-Fiction, essays
6. Out on the Porch, Reynolds Price, first edition, signed. Essay, black and white photos of Southern porches matched with quotes from fiction writers.

When Books Choose You

Books that chose me

I think books are sometimes like cats...they choose you, not the other way around.
I said that  to a dear friend last week, referring to a book she'd recommended that I was rereading.
And then Tuesday, wandering around town, I stopped in Best of Books in Edmond www.bestofbooksok.com, just browsing as I often do, and to get a free cup of coffee.
The friendly staff asked what book I was looking for, and I said I wasn't.
Then as I wandered back to the coffee pot, a book on the shelf chose me, Austin Kleon's latest, "Keep Going." This Austin, Texas artist, is a delightful departure from the routine. https://austinkleon.com
It's his third unique book on creativity, and I've read and kept his previous. They're written with a sharpie, including some of his sketches, blacked out poetry, and more--and easy to read, though deep in provoking thought and perspective.
Just what I needed as I stumble through every day, and also provoking me to return to this blog after more than a month, as it stumbles toward its tenth birthday next month.
The blog is almost comatose, changing from writing to more than art. Not sure of its future as I'm close to having an art web page soon, but then, the older you get, the more you know you don't know the future.
It's not the only book that has chosen me this year.
The other book I referred to above was Parker Palmer's "On the Brink of Everything," about aging, and it helps me as I stumble on.
Another book chose me this spring, suggested by another  good friend, "Ace in the Hole" by Annie Proulx, a novel set in the Texas Panhandle, full of accurate description and McMurtry-like characters.
Made me think of McMurtry enough that I pulled his book "Roads" off the shelf and reread it, helping spur more travel fever.
Other books that chose me this spring, sort of, were the "Killers of the Flower Moon," and "Boomtown," both about Oklahoma, because my wife was reading them and they were the selections after I'd joined the UCO faculty emeritus monthly book club.
Best of Books called last week, telling me Anne Hillerman's new novel, "The Tale Teller," had come in, which I'd pre-ordered. It's set in New Mexico and Arizona, so of course it chose me.
Currently on audio books chosen to listen to in my car, when I was driving across West Texas, is the book "Sapiens," about the history of the human race, full of science and biology and perspective on our continuing evolution as another animal on this planet. Did you know there's some evidence that our brains are getting smaller?
So those are the eight books that have chosen me this spring. They've provoked thought, new ideas, creativity, and a routine of every night, writing down a few quotes and thoughts from those books in a journal.

Turning pages of the West and other travels

@okieprof talking with Craig Johnson, author of Longmire series, at Full Circle Books. Photo by my old newspaper friend Glen Seeber.

My autographed copy

I try to read at least a book a month, but this spring has been slow, but that changed this last week, after a visit to Full Circle Bookstore a week ago to hear  Craig Johnson. He's the  best-selling author of the Longmire modern Western mystery series which has been a hit on A&E TV.
Before reading a little from his latest book about the Wyoming sheriff, "Any Other Name," he told story after humorous story, about living in Wyoming near the Montana border, reading his books in rural libraries, supporting independent book stores, affecting  sales of Rainier beer, (Walt Longmire's favorite), and working with the actors in the TV series, the only one I watch.

I've read three of his previous books, but what first hooked me was the TV show. While set in Wyoming, it's filmed in northern New Mexico, and I watch it for the drama and familiar scenery--I think I've been everywhere the show is filmed.
Obviously I bought the book, got it autographed, and finished it within a few days, my fourth book this year. Fortunately, the new TV season of the show starts Monday. The actor Robert Taylor resembles James Arness in "Gunsmoke," but this show is  more realistic and set in present day. It's a good show, different enough from the books to make you want to read them too. 
The books move quickly, gaining speed near the climaxes. I especially like his use of Wyoming weather  in the plots. What really stands out--I wanted to ask him about it at Full Circle but didn't want to bog down the large audience with my interests--Johnson inserts a lot of Native American beliefs and what we gringos would call "mysticism." But if you've lived in the West and known those cultures, you know there's a spirituality there that transcends whites' poor ideas of reality. 
Favorite line from the new book is "She stood there like an unfinished phrase." Wow.

"She stood there like an unfinished phrase"

Johnson is a big cowboy who knows the rural West and its people, and the realistic characters people his books.  I wish I'd had a recorder for all his stories, but one quote stood out during the night: "I like spending time with Walt."

I also bought Larry McMurtry's new novel, the "Last Kind Words Saloon," writing about the legends of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday, beginning in West Texas and leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. 
He's writing about the legends, not the facts, of the closing of the West, and included are Quanah Parker, Charlie Goodnight, Bill Cody and others in the brief book. I liked the first three fourths of the book...it's funny and tragic, and McMurtry is a master of characterization and funny dialog. The end of the book disappointed me though, but it's in line with McMurtry de-mythologizing the West. There are no heroes here--just people with problems who legend has made bigger than life. So his was the fifth book this year.

Two previous books this spring were for my Sunday night "soul-detox" group I've written about, spiritual traveling. Most recently was Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist," a symbolic fable of wisdom about  a young sheepherder on life's journey in the Sahara. It's been translated into more than 20 languages. And before that was "The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence" by Cindy Wigglesworth. 
What is interesting to me is that Wigglesworth's is the only non-fiction book I've read this year, a reversal of my preference for non-fiction. First book back in January, was Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Interview with Wigglesworth