Books, Books About Letters, Good for Book Groups, Great Books, Great Letters, Memoirs and Histories

It’s Out!

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My book Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing is released today.  My first reading will take place on April 24th at the Westport Barnes & Noble, to be followed May 4th at the Westport Public Library. Hope you can join me!

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Years ago, I discovered a trove of letters in my backyard. I had just become the owner of a broken-down old house and when I went to clear out the weed-choked yard, I found a steamer trunk, hidden away in a rotting garden shed. When I opened the trunk, treasure spilled out: hundreds and hundreds of handwritten letters.

Most of the letters had been written by a boy to his mother, from the time he was just learning cursive (from 1899: “Do you think my writing has improved any?”) through the time of her death in the 1930s. When the boy, James, was at Princeton from 1908 through 1912, he wrote to his mother almost every day, and sometimes twice a day: “I am getting a good college education, developing like a film, apologizing to the grass every time I step on it, scrambling like an egg, yelling like a bear, telling the upperclassmen to go to @#$ ….”

When I first read the letters, I developed a bit of a crush on James. He was so funny and sweet, and affectionate. Every letter was signed, your loving son.

I wanted to write a book about his letters and the boy I’d fallen for, but I didn’t know what to write. And I was a young mother then, with three children under the age of six, a job, and an old house to renovate. I had no time to write. The letters were stored away, to be read in stolen moments.

When my oldest son was leaving for college, I went back to the letters James had written. I found that my feelings for the young man had changed. Now I felt a maternal pride – what a good boy, to write to his mother so often- and also a tiny surge of anxiety: would my son write letters to me? We live in a digital age, and I know I could expect texts and the occasional email. But letters?

I knew then the book that I wanted to write. I set off on a quest to understand why I valued the letters of James so very much, and why I looked forward to receiving mail from my own son. I researched back through thousands of years of letter writing, going through my own saved correspondence, dozens of archives in universities and historical societies, and the personal letters lent to me by friends and found in published collections of letters. I set about defining the exact qualities of letters that make them so special.

When my energy flagged, I went back to the letters of James. What had inspired me once would inspire me again. And then I got a letter from my own son away at school, signed with love. I worked even harder.

I wanted – I needed – to tell the stories of letters and of letter writers, going back through the centuries. Inspired myself, I wanted to inspire others: write a letter! The magic is in the written word, in the shared experiences, in the private and singular moments created with pen and paper between one correspondent and the other. From the Ancients (the Egyptians wrote thousands of letters, amazing given that most of them couldn’t read or write – they went to the local scribe) through to our modern times (James Joyce wrote the bawdiest letters ever), we humans have been writing letters. There is no reason to stop now.

Every letter we write starts a connection, creates a history, lays the first stones of a bridge, extends a hand. And who knows what inspiration may spring from the letters we write?

James’ letters are on their way to Princeton, to become part of that University’s archive and maybe to stimulate another writer and spark an idea for another book. Because we never know where inspiration will come from. For me, it was in my own backyard, a trunk just waiting to be discovered.

Books, Books About Letters, Great Books, Letters, Memoirs and Histories, What Pleases Me

Discovering Inspiration in a Trunk Full of Letters

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Years ago, I discovered a trove of letters in my backyard. I had just become the owner of a broken-down old house and when I went to clear out the weed-choked yard, I found a steamer trunk, hidden away in a rotting garden shed. When I opened the trunk, treasure spilled out: hundreds and hundreds of handwritten letters.

Most of the letters had been written by a boy to his mother, from the time he was just learning cursive (from 1899: “Do you think my writing has improved any?”) through the time of her death in the 1930s. When the boy, James, was at Princeton from 1908 through 1912, he wrote to his mother almost every day, and sometimes twice a day: “I am getting a good college education, developing like a film, apologizing to the grass every time I step on it, scrambling like an egg, yelling like a bear, telling the upperclassmen to go to @#$ ….”

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When I first read the letters, I developed a bit of a crush on James. He was so funny and sweet, and affectionate. Every letter was signed, <em>your loving son</em>.

I wanted to write a book about his letters and the boy I’d fallen for, but I didn’t know what to write. And I was a young mother then, with three children under the age of six, a job, and an old house to renovate. I had no time to write. The letters were stored away, to be read in stolen moments.

When my oldest son was leaving for college, I went back to the letters James had written. I found that my feelings for the young man had changed. Now I felt a maternal pride –  what a good boy, to write to his mother so often-  and also a tiny surge of anxiety: would my son write letters to me? We live in a digital age, and I know I could expect texts and the occasional email. But letters?

I knew then the book that I wanted to write. I set off on a quest to understand why I valued the letters of James so very much, and why I looked forward to receiving mail from my own son. I researched back through thousands of years of letter writing, going through my own saved correspondence, dozens of archives in universities and historical societies, and the personal letters lent to me by friends and found in published collections of letters. I set about defining the exact qualities of letters that make them so special.

When my energy flagged, I went back to the letters of James. What had inspired me once would inspire me again. And then I got a letter from my own son away at school, signed with love. I worked even harder.

I wanted – I needed – to tell the stories of letters and of letter writers, going back through the centuries. Inspired myself, I wanted to inspire others: write a letter! The magic is in the written word, in the shared experiences, in the private and singular moments created with pen and paper between one correspondent and the other. From the Ancients (the Egyptians wrote thousands of letters, amazing given that most of them couldn’t read or write – they went to the local scribe) through to our modern times (James Joyce wrote the bawdiest letters ever), we humans have been writing letters. There is no reason to stop now.

Every letter we write starts a connection, creates a history, lays the first stones of a bridge, extends a hand. And who knows what inspiration may spring from the letters we write?

The publication of my book, Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing, is now just one week away. The inspiration discovered over fifteen years ago has finally come to fruition. James’ letters are on their way to Princeton, to become part of that University’s archive and maybe to stimulate another writer and spark an idea for another book. Because we never know where inspiration will come from. For me, it was in my own backyard, a trunk just waiting to be discovered.

Books, Good for Book Groups, Great Books, Novels, What Pleases Me

The Soul of a Book Lover

The task of writing a review of An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is daunting.  Why?  Because I don’t want to write anything that might keep someone from reading this book. Unknown

Everybody should read this book.  And absolutely all book lovers must read this book. This book is for anyone who questions their place in the universe, and who uses books to find answers; this book is for anyone who has felt ever insignificant or superfluous or confused and turned to a poem or a short story or a novel or a history for comfort and support.  There is much to be mined in this book for comfort and for inspiration and for thought.  I carry it with me now in my shoulder bag, because An Unnecessary Woman is a book to read again and again.  It is a most necessary book about an extraordinary woman.

Aaliya Saleh is divorced, childless, and largely friendless since the death of her closest friend, Hannah, years ago.  She lives alone in the Beirut apartment she came to as a teenaged wife.  The family that remains to Aaliya wears on her nerves but never comforts her fears.

Of what is Aaliya fearful? Of affirming what she has long suspected, that her life is – and most lives are – insignificant. She tells us, the readers with whom she freely converses, that the most common epitaph on Ancient Roman headstones was Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care).  But Aaliya does care.  She cares very much, and her mode of caring is through the translations she works on, year after year.  Translating is not her job – she worked in a bookstore before it closed – but it is her lifeline, almost literally.  Aaliya is a voracious and loving reader – “I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word” – and the homage she pays to the art of writing is her gift of translating.

We first meet Aaliya after she has completed her translation for the year and celebrated with the ritual of two glasses of red wine. The celebration unfortunately (or not – we shall see) has led to Aaliya mistakenly dying her hair blue.  Over the next few days, we accompany Aaliya as she goes about considering next year’s translation project. She contemplates her lifetime of reading, while also supplying an enthralling personal history of twentieth century Beirut, most of it grueling and heartbreaking, but also with a touch of enchantment and moments of joy.

As Aaliya putters through her days, she considers the question of illusions – to what extent are our self-delusions necessary?  The illusion that what we do is important, that history matters, that our love is returned and our birthplace is eternal: what feeds our perceptions, what keeps us whole and hearty?  At times Aaliya feels she knows the characters in books better than she knows the very real people who surround her – is that good or bad, or neither?  Do we learn from books or escape into them?

Our delusions and illusions are sometimes fed by the books we read.  But at the same time, the very best books remind us again and again of what is real and what is true, “that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls…. Or perhaps not.”

The “not” is what worries Aaliya but Alameddine’s novel about this unforgettable woman about this unforgettable woman offers beautiful and persuasive proof that we all contain much more than any surface explanations of our life could convey.  And the final pages of this wonderful book – very unexpected in unexpected ways – are definitive proof of soul, not only as pertaining to Aaliya, but for all readers everywhere.  Maybe we get our souls from the books we read; maybe we put our souls into the books we read.  But there can be no doubt: book lovers have soul.

Books, Great Books, What Pleases Me

Opening the Door to the Wonderful World of Reading

Quick Reads  is a UK-based nonprofit that has a simple – and wonderful – goal. To get people reading. Or as they say, To start a new chapter. Because reading is about more than just opening up a book and going through the words found there. Reading is about opening up a book and finding a whole new world around you. A new chapter begins not only on the page but also in your life: to paraphrase Cyril Connelly, books are an escape not from life, but a dive right down into it. To take that dive, you have to be comfortable with swimming. That is where Quick Reads books come in.

The barrier that too many adults have to discovering the new worlds waiting in books is that they cannot read with any degree of ease or comfort. In the U.K., one is six adults finds reading difficult: these adults will not pick up a book for pleasure or escape or edification because it is just too intimidating. In the United States, a recent Pew Study showed that the “typical American adult” read or listened to five books in the last year. Would more adults read more if reading were easier for them?

Founded on World Book Day in 2006, Quick Reads reaches out to adults with little reading ability by offering books written just for them by bestselling authors. The Quick Reads books are rich with characters, action, and emotion – they are page-turners! – but they are also easy to read, with simple sentences and vocabulary. The idea is to hook the readers on the adrenaline rush of sitting down with a book and discovering a whole new world, and then encouraging readers to meet their new addiction by supplying, at a very low cost (Quick Reads books are priced to sell), more and more books of action, adventure, and engagement.

As readers grow more comfortable with the habits of reading, and their skills improve, I hope they will move on to increasingly complex and challenging literature – thereby becoming committed, for good and forever, to reading. As I’ve always said, “great good comes from reading great books” and reading great books starts with just plain reading. The delightful video put together by Quick Reads has British celebrities offering their own take on the joys of reading. My favorite line is from the musician and TV star Mylene Klass: “It’s like getting a key and unlocking a whole new world…a book can take you anywhere.”

I’ve read a number of the many books offered by Quick Reads, including Four Warned by Jeffrey Archer, The Escape by Lynda LaPlante, and Hidden by Barbara Taylor Bradford. The books are easy to read and to follow but they are also quite fun and very engaging. Hook a reader, then point him or her to the closest library, and let the adventure begin. This year World Book Day occurs on March 6 – why not gift a friend (or two or three) with the key to a new world?

Books, Books About Letters, Good for Book Groups, Great Books, Historical Fiction, Novels, What Pleases Me

Quiet Dell: Tragedy and Redemption

I loved Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips. It is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, containing every necessary element for a great book: compelling and fully-developed characters, resonant and alive atmosphere, complex and provoking plot, satisfying and unforgettable resolution, and absolutely beautiful writing. Unknown-1

Phillips takes her time with this novel, allowing layers of the story to grow and deepen and bloom into a fully-realized world of good and bad, hope and despair, past and present, hell and even heaven itself. The characters latched on to me and took hold, as surely as if my hand was being held; I became intimately connected, especially to the children, and when trouble comes, I shook with fear and helplessness – and I became nervous with desire for revenge, and hungry for redemption.

Phillips’ novel is based on the true story of Harry Powers, a man who seduced middle aged women he found through the lonely hearts correspondence clubs popular in the early 1900s. In his love letters to his victims, he claimed to be both wealthy and decent, a single man looking to settle down and start a family, and lacking only the proper woman at his side. The women became convinced of his love, gathered their life savings and possessions, and took off with him, never to be seen again. No one knows how many women Powers killed but he was a serial murder who acted out his murderous fantasies for years before being caught.

In telling the story of the murders that finally brought Powers to the attention of the police and landed him in jail and on trial for his life, Phillips is wise enough to go easy on the revenge – she knows there is little solace in its fulfillment – but goes heavy and deep with the redemption, and for this I am grateful. She offers moving and persuasive proof that the only answer to evil is goodness. Goodness in the form of love and connection, and goodness in the form of survival. The warming of another heart, the resilience of joined company, and the promise of another, better day: “The stream meanders, shines with snowmelt; the water, shaken in ripples, warms suddenly, as though some seismic shift deep in the earth moves time forward. The air breathes and the trees stir, tossing their limbs, opening every bud and leaf.”

The promise of spring, of cycles, of rebirth and renewal. Found in a Quiet Dell.

Books, Good for Book Groups, Great Books, Novels, What Pleases Me

The Guest Cat

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide is a slender but rich meditation on fate. What force directs the twists of our lives – or are all events random and therefore beyond our control? When a tiny, independent, and utterly charming cat enters the lives of a couple living in a rented guest house, the unexpected affection and reliance the narrating husband and his wife feel towards the little feline sets off a chain of disquisitions on nature, destiny, joy, pleasure, and sorrow – and on the importance of acceptance of all such gifts of fate, in the moment and of the moment. Unknown

The narrator struggles to define what he feels towards the cat and where she fits – so unexpectedly – into his life; time is passing and he knows all that he is experiencing will change and disappear, but he still tries to stop time and enjoy what he has found in his quiet corner of Tokyo. He turns to Art for guidance, including the works of an abstract artist he befriends, the words of a dying poet he has long admired, and the poems of Machiavelli. The artist tried to capture moments in time, the poet is running out of time, and Machiavelli is thwarted in his efforts to control a symbol of time, the flowing of the river Arno. Although we might associate Machiavelli primarily with the rather ruthless guidance of The Prince, it is through his poems that he shares his experience with forces beyond his control. Working with Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli sought to change the course of the Arno through Florence – but the forces of the river were too strong to divert or change. Machiavelli experienced the futility of trying to change the tide (literally and metaphorically) and put the experience into poetry: “Fortune also is unkind, boldly her long tresses/Disarranged – now here, now there,/One after the other, transform all things…”

Much as Machiavelli used poetry in an effort to understand the forces of the Arno (and of destiny), the narrator uses his writing as a way to control (and understand) the ebb and flow of his life, including his connections to friends, his wife, the cat, and time itself. But even in writing of that special time in his life when a little cat made herself guest in his home, he cannot fully grasp the import of the moments he shared with her: “All I want is to know what happened – I want to somehow grasp every detail of the events of that day, that one day like a tiny dewdrop…but now it’s all engulfed in the profound darkness of time.”

Hiraide’s writing shines a light into the connections that come from living fully in the moments of our pleasure, and the sorrow that comes when such moments pass into what he so aptly calls “the darkness of time.” Hiraide’s writing is lyrical and captivating – his description of the relationship he develops with a dragonfly mesmerizes – and I will revisit The Guest Cat with pleasure, much as I return to favorite poems and paintings and memories. Fate goes where she wishes, times passes without pause, but our experiences of events belongs wholly to us in the moment, no matter the engulfing darkness to come. IMG_7737

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide won the Kiyama Shohei Literary Award in Japan and was a bestseller in France. It was just released in its English translation; it was translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland.

Books, Good for Book Groups, Great Books, Historical Fiction, Memoirs and Histories, What Pleases Me

The Brilliance of Ishmael Beah

The novel Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah is a brilliant book, not in terms of innovation or style, but in terms of illumination – and there is no better brilliance for a book, or for an author. In telling the story of the village Imperi and its inhabitants, Beah’s writing illuminates and animates: details of village life, past and present, become clear and vivid; its inhabitants spring into shape (and from the page) body and soul; and the surroundings of the Sierra Leone upcountry do indeed surround: reading his novel made me feel as if I myself was sitting at the feet of the elders, absorbing history and lessons and solace. That kind of storytelling is brilliance, and Ishmael Beah shines. Unknown

Beah utilizes both the lyrical verbal traditions of his country – “God and the gods would wave their hands through the breeze to wipe just a few things off the face of the earth so that it would be able to accommodate the following day” – and the clarity of simple English – “the night that followed, the rooster started crowing at 9:00 p.m. for daybreak” – to tell a story that is at times heartbreaking, and at times inspiring, and at all times, captivating. Beah has no agenda and no grand plan either. He lets his story unfold: a village in Sierra Leone, decimated by war, rebuilds itself through love and determination; then the village is destroyed again, this time by “development” and all the attendance vices of corruption, greed, and dismissal of the past. There are victims and there are villains, but most of all, there are survivors, some by hook or by crook, and some simply by going on.

Without any power in determining the future of the village or of themselves, there would seem to be two choices available to the villagers: resignation to the corruption or joining in with the corruption. But there is a third choice, as Beah has his characters demonstrate: acceptance (so strong and positive that it is more like courage) and optimism that all is not lost, until it is all is over. As one character advises, when a family is near despair, survivors understand that “the world is not ending today, and that you must cheer up if you want to continue living in it.”

What is magical and yet so very simple, and also so incredibly strong about the book is how Beah portrays the optimism of his people. Hope is not based on undefined “things will be better tomorrow” delusions (because they probably won’t be) but on the firm belief that comfort and even happiness can be found in the here and now: “this wasn’t the place for illusions; the reality here was the genuine happiness that came about from the natural magic of standing next to someone and being consumed by the fortitude of his or her humanity.” How basic is that? And yet how very wise: wisdom not only for the villagers to live by, but for all of us.

The villagers do want to continue living in the world, even if living in their village is no longer possible. Without any rights or property, expectations or certainties, the villagers still exult in what they do have: the promise that “miracles happen every day” – the miracles of human relationships, the highs of real conversation and connection, and the guidance of stories, passed down through generations, stories that re-root and then re-apply to each new phase of life: “We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness.”

Ishmael Beah offers his own tales, stories of incredible resilience – living in the radiance of tomorrow – in his wrenching memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, and now in this beautiful novel, Radiance of Tomorrow. I look forward to the possibilities of many more such tales from Beah, and hold tightly to hope for all the very real people who have inspired his brilliance.

Books About Letters, Good for Book Groups, Great Letters, Letters, Memoirs and Histories, What Pleases Me

The Art of Cooking – and Letter Writing

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When I heard that my local library, the Westport Public Library, had chosen Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, as the Westport Reads for this year, I was thrilled. Not because I am a great cook and have been inspired by Julia’s recipes. Far from it – in fact, I am a failure at following recipes, and the ones created by Julia Child are well beyond my reach. But what I do share with Julia Child is a reverence for and dependence upon letters. Julia and her husband Paul were devoted letter writers, to each other and to their family and friends. Paul wrote long letters to his twin brother every week, and Julia wrote short but regular letters to the father she did not particularly get along with – except via mail.

Together, they created a wonderful tradition of the annual Valentine Day’s letter, sent to all their friends and family in lieu of a holiday card. These self-produced cards are quite simply, fabulous. I especially loved the one of the two of them in the bath, bubbles artfully arranged to protect privacy. th The little heart-shaped bubble above their heads, stating Wish You Were Here, is especially lovely and funny – did they really wish all their friends could join them in the tub? Probably not – but they allowed all friends in, via their card.

The writing of My Life in France was largely possible because of the vast numbers of letters Julia and Paul wrote over the years, some saved by them and others by family. These letters allowed Julia to reconstruct her years in Europe and the story behind the writing of her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Much as lawyers use old letters to spark remembrances in a witness on the stand, Julia’s grandson Alex Prud-homme was able to use old letters to jiggle Julia’s memory about specific moments from the years she and her husband spent in Europe and then back home in the United States – and from these reawakened memories, the marvelous memoir was put together.

As Julia herself says in the book, about reading the old letters that she and Paul wrote, “the events those letters describe come rushing back to me with great immediacy: Paul noticing the brilliant sparkle of autumn light on the dark Seine, his daily battles with Washington bureaucrats, the smell of Montmartre at dusk, or the night we spied wild-haired Colette eating at that wonderful Old World restaurant Le Grand Vefour..” She then adds, “It is remarkable that our family had the foresight to save those letters – it’s almost as if they knew Alex and I were going to sit down and write this book together one day….”

How wonderful that they did sit down and write this book, for through the book (and the letters) we lucky readers are brought along for the ride! We become as excited as Paul, for example, in reading what he wrote to his twin brother about the wonderful experiences offered by being in Paris: “Lipstick on my belly button and music in the air! Thaaat’s Paris! What a lovely city! ….How fascinating the crowds before one’s café table, how quaint and charming and hidden the little courtyards with their wells and statues. Those garlic-filled belches! Those silk-stockinged legs! Those mascara’d eyelashes! Those electric switches and toilet chains that never work! Hela! Dites-Donc! Bouillabasse!!”

And another of Paul’s letters allows us to be in the room with Julia, watching her cook: “ Julie, with a blue denim apron on, a dish towel stuck under her belt, a spoon in each hand, stirring two pots at the same time. Warning bells are sounding off like signals from the podium, and a garlic-flavored steam fills the air with an odoriferous leitmotif. The oven door opens and shuts so fast you barely notice the deft thrust of a spoon as she dips into a casserole and up to her mouth for a taste-check like a perfectly timed double-beat on the drums. She stands there surrounded by a battery of instruments with an air of authority and confidence…”

Letters create a circle. A circle in which writer and reader join – to share experiences. To be together. For advice or jokes or just to hang out. But a circle that has been especially constructed. Much like cooking a great meal creates a circle, enclosing all members of the table in its grasp. Allowing us to feel safe and loved and special. Just like letters received – and sent – make us feel.

Letters and recipes, (and books, for that matter) all require that both care and time be taken. Letters asking for favors, letters offering condolences, letters expressing thanks or interest or just the desire to reconnect – all of these letters are written with care, to show that we care. We care enough to find the notepaper, the envelope, a pen. A stamp, and the address. We care enough to sit awhile with our thoughts, compose them, put them down on paper. This care, so necessary to good letter writing, applies to cooking as well. One of Julia’s overriding precepts in preparing recipes – her advice to all cooks – is that care be taken. The care to read the instructions, assemble the right ingredients, and then follow each step to the letter: as Julia says, “a careful approach will result in a magnificent burst of flavor, a thoroughly satisfying meal, perhaps even a life-changing experience…”

Care, time, and letters have gone into the making of My Life in France, and the result is rich, surprising, and satisfying as only the best meals, letters, and books can be. Unknown

Books, Books About Letters, E-Books, Great Letters, Letters, What Pleases Me

Letters I Missed

How did this happen? How could I have missed this fantastic collection of letters about cricket? In my quest to understand just why letters are so important a mode of communication, surely letters to the editors of the Daily Telegraph on the subject of cricket would have provided some insight. photo-171 Last night I discovered on a friend’s coffee table during a dinner party Not in My Day, Sir: Cricket Letters to The Daily Telegraph, edited by Martin Smith. What a discovery it was!

Having now perused the collection, I can say with certainty that the letters included prove one of the main points I make in my book, Signed, Sealed, Delivered: that letters show just how much we care. A letter writer takes the time to gather his/her thoughts; places them in a meaningful and cohesive order; puts them down on paper (the effort required to find just the right sort of paper offers more proof of the importance of the thoughts to be shared), then places the letter into an envelope (effort to find the envelope, ditto) and affixes a stamp (ditto); prints out the correct address on the envelope (ditto, again) and then ventures out to the mailbox and commits the letter to the great, wide world without any chance of recalling it or deleting it. All those actions and efforts demonstrate just how much the letter writer cares about what he or she is writing.

And let me tell you: these cricket letter writers do care. There is the writer who protests “over-fifties” complaining about what batsmen and bowlers wear on the field: “When will they realise that cricket is about winning? Personally, I wouldn’t care if Mike Atherton took to the field with a W.G. Grace-size beard, wearing a dressing-gown and goggles, with a fag hanging out of the corner of his mouth and swearing like a trooper if it meant a winning English team.” I may not know who W.G. Grace is but the sentiment – and the care – comes across loud and clear. Then there are the long missives about scoring (I will never understand how points are accumulated in cricket) and the notes about the food on offer (no better over there than the hot dog and nacho stands we find here) and the carefully penned diatribes about issues utterly beyond my ken (can someone tell me what the lbw law is?) but there is no lack of comprehension when it comes to the just how much that letter writer cares about the game of cricket.

I can say without reservation, having read through the letters in Not In My Day, Sir: cricket lovers care a lot about cricket. In fact, I am sure the Daily Telegraph has boatloads of letters on cricket just waiting for editing into another (and another and another) collection. Until then, get your hands on these, then sit back and enjoy the efforts (heart and soul, anger and love, fear and sadness) that went into the writing. The letters that we take the time to write are proof of just how much we care.

Books, Books About Letters, Great Letters, Letters, Memoirs and Histories, What Pleases Me

Letters of Note, Splendidly Noted

Shaun Usher understands the art of letter writing – as any fan of his site, Letters of Note, knows – and now his book by the same name brings all that art to the printed page. Letters of Note, the book, is beautiful, large-size, fabulously produced, and above all, it is art. Not only are the one hundred letters he chose to reproduce here in the book great to look at, they are great to read, allowing experiences that are in turn transformative, moving, and inspirational (or chilling, in a few cases). The letters are historical and for the ages, personal and universal, just like art. Just like letters.
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Anyone will be inspired to write a letter after perusing the examples offered by Usher, especially given the variety of styles – straightforward, like the letter written by Abraham Lincoln to a very young adviser; exalting, like the letter written by Mark Twain to Walt Whitman; honest and generous, like the letter written by Iggy Pop to a fan; humorous, like the one written by cartoonist Charles M. Schultz explaining that a newly-introduced character would be axed (and she was, as fully illustrated by Schultz in the letter); and heartbreaking, like the last love letter written by a Union solider before he was killed in the First Battle at Bull Run. Letters long and short are presented, typed and scrawled, elegant and rude – Usher has all kinds, and the lesson is: just do it. Write a letter, mail it, and make history.

The one hundred letters are put together with humor (nice juxtaposition: a letter from Queen Elizabeth II to Eisenhower, sharing her scone recipe, followed immediately by a letter from Jack the Ripper detailing how he ate the kidney of one of his victims), intelligence (good background information is provided for each entry, allowing a full appreciation of the letters without cluttering up the book with too much noise; taste (photos and layout and production), and most of all, with love. Shaun Usher ranks as one of the world’s great lover of letters and his reverence for the art of correspondence shows.The volume is so well-produced it could become an heirloom, passed down through generations. I can only hope that future generations will recognize the mode of letter writing, and find inspiration, as I do, in just how meaningful and lasting a communication by letter can be.

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