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[book post] The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
I started my local Bird Book Club on a whim, prompted by three factors: (1) a desire to bro out with my bird bros at not the crack of fucking dawn, (2) if I pick the meeting place I effectively get to pick the beer, and (3) fond memories of the nature writing I enjoyed as a kid: Aldo Leopold and the like.
Well, since our club's inception, we’ve alternated a few times between nature writing and science writing, and I’m at last forced to admit that I’m just plain enjoying the science writing more. This realization gives me no great joy; like my recent shift in preference for podcasts over music albums, I worry that this is yet another sign that I am becoming old, boring, jaded. Like, when I was in high school, I could quote that poetic green fire bit from A Sand County Almanac by heart; would those words move me similarly now? Or would I just sigh and say, too sentimental, too purple, too simple?
I feel a bit bad, offering this prelude for this particular post, because it's not Lanham's fault that I’m not much for rose-tinted memoirs these days. He's just the poor dude whose book I happened to read while I was kicking these thoughts around anyway, and they had to come out somewhere, so yeah, here they are on my blog.
Putting aside my newfound realization that I’m just not as into this kind of book as I used to be—
This was a slim and reasonably interesting collection of memoir-y essays—not actually as nature-focused as I expected, but that's to the book's credit. The strongest section is the beginning, where Lanham describes his singularly fascinating upbringing in rural South Carolina—multigenerational household, highly educated black parents, lots of siblings, acres and acres of farmland, and something new to discover every day. Here, Lanham's descriptions of the natural world in southern Appalachia—a place dear to my heart—are at their loveliest. Probably because he’s not spending too much time dwelling or sentimentalizing every little thing; he’s just telling these lovely stories, and the nature's an inextricable part of it, so it gets told too. Some of the latter essays , by contrast, feel a bit too pat, too tidy, without enough of the piedmont's lovely wildness.
All that being said, I’d rather read this than that Abbey book any day, so, there’s that, nature-writing-lovers take note :P
(...also GOD I want to know more about the author’s hot older brother)
And yeah, I'm all caught up on book posting for a bit! More coming in a month or two~
Well, since our club's inception, we’ve alternated a few times between nature writing and science writing, and I’m at last forced to admit that I’m just plain enjoying the science writing more. This realization gives me no great joy; like my recent shift in preference for podcasts over music albums, I worry that this is yet another sign that I am becoming old, boring, jaded. Like, when I was in high school, I could quote that poetic green fire bit from A Sand County Almanac by heart; would those words move me similarly now? Or would I just sigh and say, too sentimental, too purple, too simple?
I feel a bit bad, offering this prelude for this particular post, because it's not Lanham's fault that I’m not much for rose-tinted memoirs these days. He's just the poor dude whose book I happened to read while I was kicking these thoughts around anyway, and they had to come out somewhere, so yeah, here they are on my blog.
Putting aside my newfound realization that I’m just not as into this kind of book as I used to be—
This was a slim and reasonably interesting collection of memoir-y essays—not actually as nature-focused as I expected, but that's to the book's credit. The strongest section is the beginning, where Lanham describes his singularly fascinating upbringing in rural South Carolina—multigenerational household, highly educated black parents, lots of siblings, acres and acres of farmland, and something new to discover every day. Here, Lanham's descriptions of the natural world in southern Appalachia—a place dear to my heart—are at their loveliest. Probably because he’s not spending too much time dwelling or sentimentalizing every little thing; he’s just telling these lovely stories, and the nature's an inextricable part of it, so it gets told too. Some of the latter essays , by contrast, feel a bit too pat, too tidy, without enough of the piedmont's lovely wildness.
All that being said, I’d rather read this than that Abbey book any day, so, there’s that, nature-writing-lovers take note :P
(...also GOD I want to know more about the author’s hot older brother)
And yeah, I'm all caught up on book posting for a bit! More coming in a month or two~