A book for those who love books
Yes!
Yes! YES! YES!
Lest you think I am wallowing in some bed of literoticism or celebrating Molly Bloom from James Joyce’s Ulysses, let me clarify. I am celebrating the return of one of the great bibliophiles of our age to the public square, by which I mean the world of print. It’s an occasion that calls for little black dresses and tuxedos, a platter of Brie and baguettes, fireworks, some lively chamber music, magnums of champagne, and hands raw with applause.
I am talking about James Mustich and his 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List (Workman Publishing Co, Inc., 2018, 948 pages).
From 1986 to 2006, Mustich served as president, editor, and publisher of the mail-order catalog, A Common Reader: Books For Readers With Imagination. I forget how I discovered this treasure house of good books, but once I became a subscriber, the arrival of this catalogue in the mail, each issue stuffed with scores of reviews of both familiar and unfamiliar books, all available from A Common Reader, was a day of grand celebration. Erudite, quirky, amusing, enticing: these are just a few of the adjectives that might describe this festival of words and writers. Mustich introduced me to so many grand books, the most significant of which, for my development as both reader and writer, was Alice Thomas Ellis and her Home Life series, which still sit on my shelf and to which I often go when I need to find a certain acerbic high tone in an essay I am writing.
Then, without explanation, A Common Reader vanished. Those of us who loved that publication mourned its passing with funeral rites and black bands on our sleeves. And that was the last I heard of James Mustich.
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Until this week.
There it stood, bold as a bugler sounding the charge, on top of the “Hot Reads” shelf in the library: 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die.
Here are the same sharp, amusing, and intelligent reviews that once characterized A Common Reader. Here are sketches of novels, books of poetry, histories, biographies, classic works for children, gardeners, and cooks. In each concise review, Mustich also gives us notes containing recommendations of other authors whose work is related to the writer under review either by theme or style. He pays homage, of course, to authors dead and living whose names remain household words—Dickens, Stephen King, Cervantes, Flannery O’Connor, Emily Dickinson, Anne Frank. But just as he once did in A Common Reader, Mustich introduces writers less familiar to many of us. We meet Soviet writer Vasily Grossman and his novel, Life and Fate, which the government refused to publish until after his death. Laura Krauss Melmed’s The Rain Babies, a children’s book, is according to Mustich “the kind of book that stays in a family across the generations.” Mustich’s description of Eleanor Clark’s Rome and a Villa returned me to the city I visited for a month four years ago.
Workman Press deserves a medal for the layout of 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die. The organization, the comprehensive index, and the headers for each short article: all make for pleasurable browsing. Photographs of authors, the reproductions of book covers, and stills from movies made from various books appear on most of the pages, adding to the beauty of this enchanting compilation.
Mustich anticipates that readers will be critical of some of his choices and of books he has neglected. He writes that 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die is neither comprehensive nor authoritative … it is meant to be an invitation to a conversation — even a merry argument — about the books and authors that are missing ….”
To end this review, to underscore the passion this man brings to literature, I can do no better than to quote the final lines of Mustich’s Introduction:
To get lost in a story, or even a study, is inherently to acknowledge the voice of another, to broaden one’s perspective beyond the confines of one’s own understanding. A good book is the opposite of a selfie; the right book at the right time can expand our lives in the way love does, making us more thoughtful, more generous, more brave, more alert to the world’s wonders and more pained by its inequalities, more wise, more kind. In the metaphorical bookshop you are about to enter, I hope you’ll discover a few to add to those you already cherish.
Happy reading.
•••
Readers of these reviews know that several authors are favorites of mine, which is why I bring their books to the pages of The Smoky Mountain News. One of these is James Lee Burke, who has just released another in his series chronicling the life and times of Dave Robicheaux, the Louisiana detective and some-time police officer, a Vietnam veteran, a member of AA who often battles the bottle, a three-time widower, a man who sticks up for the innocent and the downtrodden.
In The New Iberia Blues (Simon & Schuster, 2019, 449 pages), Robicheaux confronts corruption among a visiting movie cast, ritualistic murders, money laundering, a drug outfit with ties to the Mob, and of course, the ghosts from his past. His old friend, former police officer and now private detective, the hard-drinking and hard-living Clete Purcell, joins him in these investigations. His boss, Helen Soileau, tries once again to rein in both men when they stray beyond the limits of the law. Alafair, Robicheaux’s daughter by adoption and a writer, becomes heavily involved with some in the movie crew, and so figures in this novel. Finally, we meet Bailey Ribbons, a former schoolteacher and now a police officer, to whom the aging Robicheaux is romantically drawn.
All the elements of the other Robicheaux tales appear here: the descriptions, fine as photographs, of the Southern Louisiana countryside; the sharp dialogue; the moral and philosophical dialogues within Robicheaux himself.
Snag the book and treat yourself to The New Iberia Blues.
(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
