Finding a good graduation present can be a chore, so we have made a brief annotated list of suggestions -- some are standards and others are new; six are by or about Mississippians; several offer a sort of commencement guidance; and a couple are just for laughs. We have made a special effort to identify reasonably priced and very nice books.
• Wit
h its three chapters on “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice,” Eudora Welty’s classic memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (Harvard University Press, $15 pb) is about as apt a graduation gift as there is.
• A new Eudora Welty publication is a pretty and inexpensive hardcover edition that combines her classic short novels, A Delta Wedding and The Ponder Heart, into one volume (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22.00).
• Pat Conroy explores the origins of his love for reading and the power of books to shape a life in My Reading Life (Doubleday, 25.00 hb).
• Two books that have captured the attention of the nation this year include the present number one bestselling novel, The Tiger’s Wife (Random House, 25.00 hb), by 25 year-old Tea Obreht, who visited us in April.
• The other is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Random House, $30.00 hb), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and signed by the author, Isabel Wilkerson, the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.
• Tao Te Chi
ng is considered to be the most terse and economical of the world’s religious texts, and this hardcover edition (Everyman, $18) with a ribbon marker is very nice.
• Another inexpensive hardcover classic that will fit in any dorm room or briefcase is The Quotable Thoreau (Princeton University Press, $19.95).
• Good Poems – American Places (Viking, $28.95), selected and cleverly divided into 15 topical sections by Garrison Keillor.
• Willie Morris composed his classic North Toward Home (Vintage, $15.95 pb) in his early 30s and I received it as a graduation gift when I completed high school, and it’s still good for the occasion. (I also got a towel that you wrap around your torso and snap at the waist, a sort of mini-toga.)
• 20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker (FSG, $16.00) is a paperback with French flaps containing the best from new young writers.
• Dean Faulkner Wells wrote a beautiful memoir with lots of great Oxford history in Every Day By the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi (Crown, $25.00), and it’s made
more special by her signature.
• And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray (University Press of Mississippi, $40.00 hb) is an accomplished biography of a great man and inspiring figure, written by Oxford native Araminta Stone Johnston.
• No list of this sort is complete without something for the sports minded, and here it’s I Beat the Odds (Gotham, $26.00), signed by its author, the great football player and star of The Blindside, Michael Oher.
• You were wondering where the laugh stuff is. One is Thank You Notes by Jimmy Fallon ($12.00 pb), which is NOT a book on how to write a thank-you note.
• The other is appropriate for many graduates, F In Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers (Chronicle, $9.95 pb). Q: What is a fibula? A: A little lie.
h its three chapters on “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice,” Eudora Welty’s classic memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (Harvard University Press, $15 pb) is about as apt a graduation gift as there is.• A new Eudora Welty publication is a pretty and inexpensive hardcover edition that combines her classic short novels, A Delta Wedding and The Ponder Heart, into one volume (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22.00).
• Pat Conroy explores the origins of his love for reading and the power of books to shape a life in My Reading Life (Doubleday, 25.00 hb).
• Two books that have captured the attention of the nation this year include the present number one bestselling novel, The Tiger’s Wife (Random House, 25.00 hb), by 25 year-old Tea Obreht, who visited us in April.
• The other is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Random House, $30.00 hb), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and signed by the author, Isabel Wilkerson, the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.
• Tao Te Chi
ng is considered to be the most terse and economical of the world’s religious texts, and this hardcover edition (Everyman, $18) with a ribbon marker is very nice.• Another inexpensive hardcover classic that will fit in any dorm room or briefcase is The Quotable Thoreau (Princeton University Press, $19.95).
• Good Poems – American Places (Viking, $28.95), selected and cleverly divided into 15 topical sections by Garrison Keillor.
• Willie Morris composed his classic North Toward Home (Vintage, $15.95 pb) in his early 30s and I received it as a graduation gift when I completed high school, and it’s still good for the occasion. (I also got a towel that you wrap around your torso and snap at the waist, a sort of mini-toga.)
• 20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker (FSG, $16.00) is a paperback with French flaps containing the best from new young writers.
• Dean Faulkner Wells wrote a beautiful memoir with lots of great Oxford history in Every Day By the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi (Crown, $25.00), and it’s made
more special by her signature.• And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray (University Press of Mississippi, $40.00 hb) is an accomplished biography of a great man and inspiring figure, written by Oxford native Araminta Stone Johnston.
• No list of this sort is complete without something for the sports minded, and here it’s I Beat the Odds (Gotham, $26.00), signed by its author, the great football player and star of The Blindside, Michael Oher.
• You were wondering where the laugh stuff is. One is Thank You Notes by Jimmy Fallon ($12.00 pb), which is NOT a book on how to write a thank-you note.
• The other is appropriate for many graduates, F In Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers (Chronicle, $9.95 pb). Q: What is a fibula? A: A little lie.