“A Reader’s Book of Days” by Tom Nissley
c.2013, W.W. Norton
$24.95 / $26.50 Canada
448 pages
Today is a good day to curl up with a book.
And that may be all you’ll do on this day, or today may be monumental in ways you’ll never forget. The thing is, you won’t know until it’s over and you’re ready for another day loaded with possibilities and books.
Did you ever wonder how your favorite author filled his or her time? Did you ever imagine what life-changing events made someone’s story unfold? Browse through “A Reader’s Book of Days” by Tom Nissley, and you’ll peek at literary lives.
When he was in college, Tom Nissley was “the guy in the library with books piled all around…” He was obsessed with the Classics, and authors that almost nobody ever checks out.
The reason? He was looking for “stories,” he says. Bits of life, whether that of the authors themselves or the characters about whom they wrote. Nissley fixated on diaries and letters, minutiae and dates – particularly dates, because he wanted to “create” a book that would tell a tale in small bits. He loved finding out, for instance, that March 7 was the day that Bret Easton Ellis was born (1964), Thomas Aquinas died (1274) and Ernest Hemingway received a Dear John letter (1919). Or that Ogden Nash was born, Blaise Pascal died, and Robert Louis Stevenson admitted that he hated civilization on August 19, but in different years. He was surprised to see that some modern authors used their own birthdays as “important dates in their novels.”
Beginning on January 1 (birthdate of E.M. Forster), Nissley meanders through the years and the centuries. We learn what happened when Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia (May 16). We come to understand why August 11 might be every bit as scary as Halloween. Authors will be impressed by what Walt Whitman did on July 4. We’re ringside at meetings between Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and between Vladimir Nabokov and Dr. Seuss – both on July 5, forty-four years apart. We learn what George Bernard Shaw had the guts to do on February 29, and we end the year with a snub from Franz Kafka.
Want to make today a little better? Grab “A Reader’s Book of Days,” turn off the phone, clear your calendar, and settle in. If you’re a booklover, you won’t want to put this book down.
That’s because each of author Tom Nissley’s entries are varied and lively. Days are filled with notable births and deaths, as well as paragraph after paragraph of things that either happened to an author or that happened to an author’s story. Months begin with a timely introduction, and each chapter includes a “recommended reading” list to get you in the mood – all of which makes this book fun and very, very habit-forming.
Look up your birthday (Nissley admits that he did!). Turn to a special date. Open this book at random and read, or see what happened tomorrow. For you, “A Reader’s Book of Days” practically begs you to browse now.
