Bøger af Sam Pickering

A fresh collection of humorous and often satirical essays by Sam Pickering, who keeps telling us it's his last book!

"Last year Sam Pickering announced that he'd written his final word. 'I intend to sit in a chair at the edge of the driveway and on sunny days doze through hours waking up occasionally to identify birds on the feeder. My hands and lap will be empty, and I won't worry about a wind scattering papers across the yard.' Three days later Mike a college classmate wrote him. 'Given all the books you have written, it makes me sad to hear that you have written your last book. Please remember what mighty things 80-year-olds can do. For instance, Goethe taught himself Greek when he was 80. Too bad he died at 81.' 'I'm trapped,' Pickering said and picked up his pencil. 'Words are me.' Sam Pickering has written more than thirty books and barrows of articles. When not at his desk, he was in the classroom, the last thirty-five teaching English at the University of Connecticut. Originally from Nashville, he did not plan to teach, or write. 'But,' he says, 'the good life knocks a person about and takes him here and there'-in Pickering's case to years meandering the Mid-East, Eastern and Western Europe, to Australia, and Nova Scotia, to places great and small. He says he loved teaching, the secret to which was 'liking people.' His pages reflect his enjoyment of and love of life, particularly the ordinary things that form the fabric 'of all our lives'"--Page 4 of cove

He roams New England, Arkansas, the Caribbean, Nova Scotia and the familiar and odd plots of mind and thought. He explores shorelines and climbs "hillish" mountains. He sits on porches and talks to passersby and their dogs. He meets strange and delightful people, most of whom are real. "Reading Pickering," a reviewer wrote in The Smithsonian decades ago, "is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend." "Now," Pickering says, "I am old, and the friends who thought me witty have fallen off the perch. But that's okay. What I write makes me smile and mutter, 'What a guy.'" And what wonderful essays these are-pages that awaken the affections and make readers smile and embrace the beauty of this bruised world.

More than two dozen essays visit Pickering's greatest themes: family, nature, seizing the day, and the strange goings-on in Carthage, Tennessee.

This is Pickering's second book about Australia, following on 'Walkabout Year', published in 1995. 'Waltzing the Magpies' recounts the year that the author and his family spent in western parts of Australia.

Sweeping in and out of real and imagined places, Dreamtime highlights the curious character of an unconventional teacher, writer, traveler, husband, and father as he takes stock of his multifaceted life. Sam Pickering-the inspiration for the main character in Dead Poets Society-guides us on a journey through his reflections on retirement, aging, gardening, and travel. He describes the pleasures of domesticity, summers spent in Nova Scotia, and the joy of sharing a simple life with his wife of almost forty years. "e;Life is a tiresome journey,"e; Pickering muses, "e;and when a man arrives at the end, he is generally out of breath."e; Although Pickering is now more likely to shuffle than gallop, he isn't yet out of breath, ideas, or ink. The refreshing and reflective substance of these essays shines through a patina of wit in Pickering's characteristically evocative and sincere prose. The separate events depicted in Dreamtime invite the reader into Pickering's personal experiences as well as into his viewpoints on teaching and encounters with former students. In "e;Spring Pruning,"e; Pickering describes the precarious tumor in his parathyroid and the possibility of cancer affecting his daily life. In a refreshingly honest tone Pickering says, "e;Moreover the funeral had become a staple of chat, so much so I'd recently mulled having the raucous, insolent ringer on my telephone replaced by the recording of taps."e;Appealing to creative writers and readers who enjoy an adventurous account of travels through life, Dreamtime accentuates the lifestyle of a longtime master teacher whose experiences take him from sunny days in the classroom to falling headfirst over a fence after running a half-marathon. Unpredictable, spontaneous, and always enlightening, Pickering's idiosyncratic approach and companionable charm will delight anyone who shares his intoxication with all the surprising treasures that might furnish a life with happiness.

In this, his tenth book of essays, renowned raconteur Sam Pickering wanders from Nova Scotia to Tennessee, from a middle school athletic field to an English department. He tells stories about people named Googoo and Loppie. He examines trees and flowers. He watches a daughter play soccer and a son row.

These essays record in personal and idiosyncratic terms a year in the life of a man with a tenacious commitment to pausing and wondering. Moving between humour and seriousness, the mundane and the philosophical, truth and fiction, the essays saunter through life and rummage through lives.