Woody Woodburn
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Columnist<\/p>\n
Picking up where I left off last week in answering the question, \u201cWhat is my favorite book that I own?\u201d<\/p>\n
While my previously mentioned 1885 first edition, seconding printing, of \u201cAdventures of Huckleberry Finn\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
More: Woodburn: This favorite book will surprise you<\/a><\/p>\n While my very favorite of favorites will surely come as a surprise, it should be no surprise that \u201cWooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court\u201d 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\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026but, after a moment\u2019s reflection, Coach encouraged me to go ahead and buy a second copy and give it to a friend for no reason.<\/p>\n Writers who, like Coach Wooden, have made friendship a fine art with their own gifted books now residing on my special shelf\u00a0include Ken McAlpine, Mimi Herman, Roger Thompson, Geoffrey Simpson, Tom Hoffarth, Tavis Smiley, and Chuck Thomas.<\/p>\n Dog-eared paperbacks of \u201cThe Old Man and the Sea\u201d and \u201cTravels With Charley\u201d have brought me great reading joy, but used \u201cgood\u201d condition hardcover first editions as gifts from my daughter make her Old Man\u2019s heart travel to the moon.<\/p>\n So dearly do I love \u201cThe Snow Goose,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Similarly, an age-worn collection of \u201cThe Bedtime Story Books\u201d by Thorton W. Burgess that belonged to my dad as a boy reside in my Favorite Books Bookcase.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Rather, it is a textbook, placemat-sized but thick as \u201cUlysses\u201d 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 \u2014 doctors all.<\/p>\n Why in the world would \u201cAn Atlas of Anatomy\u201d by J. C. Boileau Grant, 1947 second edition, be my most-cherished book? Because two days before my big brother passed away \u2014 exactly a year ago this week \u2014 during my very last bedside visit with him, Jimmy gave it to me along with these whispered final words:<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve been a great little brother.\u201d<\/p>\n And so it is that I learned, on page 440, about orifice of naso-lacrimal duct \u2014 the tear duct.<\/p>\n Woody Woodburn\u00a0writes a weekly column for The Star and can be contacted at\u00a0WoodyWriter@gmail.com<\/a>. His books are available at\u00a0www.WoodyWoodburn.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woody Woodburn \u00a0|\u00a0 Columnist Picking up where I left off last week in answering the question, \u201cWhat is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[617,64,63,457,5593,5598,5597,5590,5591,134,2880,5595,5587,5588,191,5585,5594,5589,5596,5584,5592,323,451,439,441,5586],"class_list":["post-3851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-and","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-books-and-literature","tag-books-comics-and-other-literature","tag-books-u0026-literature","tag-classics","tag-comics","tag-entertainment","tag-exclude","tag-exclude-from-home-front","tag-from","tag-front","tag-home","tag-john","tag-john-wooden","tag-literary","tag-literary-classics","tag-literature","tag-other","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-positive","tag-u0026","tag-wooden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}