Ernie Seckinger's
1992 Reading Notes
*** A Picture of Dorian Gray. If the perfume manufacturers had read the book, they would not have called a men's cologne Dorian Gray!* Trust Me on This, by Donal E. Westlake. "The guests fell to the cake..like an Islamic mob finding a heretic in its midst."
** John Updike: Problems
*** 1/2 Bobbie Ann Mason: In Country
***** Carl Rogers: On Becoming a Person. You cannot tell anyone anything.
**** 1/2 Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon
**** Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. A fine writing motivation book.
*** 1/2 James Jones, a Friendship by Willie Morris. This is an uneven memoir of his friend and neighbor, often sliding into a society page list of party guests. Yet it conveys Jones as a man and a writer. I would have been uncomfortable with the man, but at ease with the writer. The undertaker asked Morris "Was Mr. Jones a veteran?" Peter [Mattheissen] and I looked at each other. "Yes," I said. "He was."
*** Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. A novelization of early 20th century life in Commerce, GA.
***** Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez
**** One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
***** River Notes: The Dance of the Herons by Barry Lopez
** 1/2 A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell. I know most of the technical details she posits, but she has such a way of saying it.
*** GRANTA. This is a time in which I experimented with magazines and literary journals. GRANTA, being positioned between the two, recieved much of my attention. I'm firmly back to books now!
**** The Diary of Anais Nin. Personal honesty with an over-editing widower. I will read them no more until the manuscripts are released in free text. To edit the dead is to dishonor them. Emily Dickinson and Margaret Fuller share Nin's fate.
** 1/2 Viet Journal by James Jones
*** Truman by David McCollough. George Bush didn't read the whole book when he spoke of Truman's vocation as a farmer. Harry hated farming and got into politics to get out of the field!
*** The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff. Sequel to 84 Charing Cross Road.
** Entoverse by James Hogan. Supercomputer creating a holideck world.
**** Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. (At least a good bit of it.) He was either brave or naive to go cross-county in 1830s Argentina.
**** Morris Dees: A Season for Justice on audio tape. Equal rights are good for all of us. A human mind is a terrible thing to waste.
*** Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. She writes of the wires on the telephone poles appearing to move up and down. That phenomenon was almost an obsession for when when I was young. I would line up a straight edge--often the car's window frame--and watch the wires move up and down mimicing an oscilloscope. I seemed to project myself onto the wires moving up and down on the frantic wave like some out-of-control roller coaster ride.
*** Wordstruck by Robert MacNeil on tape. Wonderful memoir of the importance of the spoken work to him.
Want some cool books? The Friends of the Daphne Public Library prepares for the next booksale. Details plus a page of the more unusual books for sale online can be seen at our webpage .
Ernest W. Seckinger Jr
"Ernie"
Created August 17, 2002
Updated: June 29, 2008
©2002 Ernest W. Seckinger Jr