Synopsis
Frye Gaillard's first encounters with books were disappointing. As a child he never cared much for fairy tales - "stories of cannibalism and mayhem in which giants and witches; tigers and wolves did their best to eat small children." But at the age of nine; he discovered Johnny Tremain; a children's novel of the Revolutionary War; which began a lifetime love affair with books; recounted here as a reader's tribute to the writings that enriched and altered his life. In a series of carefully crafted; often deeply personal essays; Gaillard blends memoir; history and critical analysis to explore the works of Harper Lee; Anne Frank; James Baldwin; Robert Penn Warren; John Steinbeck; and many others. As this heartfelt reminiscence makes clear; the books that chose Frye Gaillard shaped him like an extended family. Reading The Books that Mattered: A Reader's Memoir will make you study your own shelves to find clues into your own literary heart.
About Frye Gaillard
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Frye Gaillard is an award-winning journalist and author of more than a dozen books on Southern culture and history, including Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed Americas; Race, Rock, and Religion: Profiles from a Southern Journalist; The Quest for Desegregation; The Dream Long Deferred: A Community's Quest for Desegregation; Kyle at 200 MPH: Sizzling Season in the Petty/NASCAR Dynasty; If I were a Carpenter: Twenty Years of Habitat for Humanity. A native of Mobile, Alabama, he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Published August 31, 2012
by NewSouth Books.
226 pages
Genres:
Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction.
Non-fiction