Bookowski's Blog

My friend Rob recently gave me this beautiful wondrous book because he loved it.  I loved it too and gave it to Grand Days’ Tom. It isn’t new; it appeared in 1967, written by a modest, private man who lived all his life in a small rural town in Essex, UK.  It won the Duff-Cooper prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time and has been cited as one of the most important books in the twentieth century on nature writing. But have you heard of it?  I hadn’t.  For many years it was out of print but Baker’s writing...

It was from my father that I learnt to love books. Perhaps I would have found my way to loving them anyway but fortunately for me I grew up surrounded by them; being read them, always getting them for presents, continually having my scope of interest stretched, being taken to libraries, seeing my father always reading and stockpiling them, hearing him talk to others about them and having conversations with him about them myself.  I don’t remember ever not knowing the joy of being read to and reading, of being drawn into another world, of learning, of being able, always...

I come from a long line of voracious readers. Those for whom summer holidays require a pile of books, siesta spots and, for me at least, ready access to the ocean. Cicadas and sunburn, champagne and mozzies all steadily buzz us into that equilibrium where one loses track of the days and navigates by novel. Last summer it was Guiseppe Di Lampesuda’s one and only book. Set during the Risorgimento “The Leopard” took the Sicilian author twenty-five years rumination and a few months furious writing to complete. Released posthumously (after two serious rejections)  “Il Gattopardo” went on to become the...