Woody Woodburn
| Columnist
Picking up where I left off last week in answering the question, “What is my favorite book that I own?”
While my previously mentioned 1885 first edition, seconding printing, of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is monetarily the most-valuable volume in my Favorite Books Bookcase, a short stack gifted by friends and family are more priceless to me largely because they were thoughtful presents.
While my very favorite of favorites will surely come as a surprise, it should be no surprise that “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court” by John Wooden is on the elite shelf. This little blue book is big-time special because of the story behind it: when I politely told Coach I would instead buy my own copy because he had already given me too many gifts on previous visits, he grinned wryly and said he could not very well give it to someone else because he had already inscribed it to me…
…but, after a moment’s reflection, Coach encouraged me to go ahead and buy a second copy and give it to a friend for no reason.
Writers who, like Coach Wooden, have made friendship a fine art with their own gifted books now residing on my special shelf include Ken McAlpine, Mimi Herman, Roger Thompson, Geoffrey Simpson, Tom Hoffarth, Tavis Smiley, and Chuck Thomas.
Dog-eared paperbacks of “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Travels With Charley” have brought me great reading joy, but used “good” condition hardcover first editions as gifts from my daughter make her Old Man’s heart travel to the moon.
So dearly do I love “The Snow Goose,” having read it a dozen times at least, that I gifted myself a volume signed by its author, Paul Gallico. Still, my favorite copy of this little-known 58-page novella is a 1941 first edition, its pricey value multiplied many times over because my friend Nick Sarris searched it out as a gift.
Indeed, while first editions and signed title pages are indeed special, emotional provenance is no less so. Hence, three muddy-moss-colored cloth-covered obviously often-read hardbacks by John Steinbeck are exceptional beauties to my eyes because they were long-ago treasured by the father of my college dorm pal Mikey Weinberg-Lynn, who wanted me to have the family heirlooms because of my great admiration for the author.
Similarly, an age-worn collection of “The Bedtime Story Books” by Thorton W. Burgess that belonged to my dad as a boy reside in my Favorite Books Bookcase.
But my all-time top top-shelf book is not a storybook, although it does have exquisite color illustrations on every page; nor is it a novella or novel.
Rather, it is a textbook, placemat-sized but thick as “Ulysses” at more than 500 pages, and heavy as a cinder block because of the glossy paper throughout. The black hardcover, particularly its spine, shows the wear from countless late-night study sessions, three successive generations in fact, for the tome originally belonged to my grandfather Ansel, whose name is on the first inside page, then my father, and in turn my eldest brother — doctors all.
Why in the world would “An Atlas of Anatomy” by J. C. Boileau Grant, 1947 second edition, be my most-cherished book? Because two days before my big brother passed away — exactly a year ago this week — during my very last bedside visit with him, Jimmy gave it to me along with these whispered final words:
“You’ve been a great little brother.”
And so it is that I learned, on page 440, about orifice of naso-lacrimal duct — the tear duct.
Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.