Dawn Reader

Dawn Reader
from Open Door Coffee Co.; Hudson, OH; Oct. 26, 2016

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

101 Books I've Loved--uploading to Kindle Direct!


My latest collection of doggerel (and wolferel) is currently uploading to Kindle Direct and will be available for purchase (2.99--the lowest allowable price!) later today (I'll post on FB when it's in the Kindle Store.) If you have a Kindle device, you can download it; if not, the Kindle app is free and you can use it on any smart phone or tablet.

Foreword


And here we go again!
Once again, I invite you on a journey, this time through 101 books that I’ve loved throughout my life. And I mean throughout my life. Accordingly, you will find here some verses about Dr. Seuss, some about Shakespeare, some about The Story of Ferdinand, some about In Search of Lost Time. Books from boyhood, adolescence, adulthood, dotage—they’re all here. Mixed together like a very inclusive gumbo.
Well, not all books I’ve loved are here, of course. I now read more than 100 books a year, so winnowing this down to 101 total was a bit of a challenge for me. Also a challenge: I wasn’t keeping a list. I just thought of one every day and wrote a quick little piece of doggerel about it. Waited for the next day.
So there was an expected consequence—or, at least, a consequence I should have expected. And maybe I should say consequenceS.
• I left out many writers whose works I’ve long loved. Ben Jonson, Henry Roth, Jonathan Franzen. (I’m blushing already. Don’t make me go on.)
• As the days and weeks (and months!) went on, I also lost track of which books I’d already written about, so—guess what!—I discovered as I was editing these texts that I written two pieces on Brian Hall’s Fall of Frost. I’ve put them now on the same page and have had to write another one—about Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone—to complete the 101 that the title promises. It’s not good to have a title that’s a lie, you know? Does damage to your credibility, right from the get-go.
All of these lines first appeared in my blog (dawnreader@blogspot), and I then linked them to Facebook, where my FB Friends enjoyed scrolling by them with very practiced speed. I have done some light editing—but I’ve not excluded any.
Oh, and you’ll notice there’s a gap in the dates at one point. Health issues.
I’ve also included—as has been my wont in these doggerel publications—two other sections of verse: Desultory Doggerel and Wolferel.
The former are silly poems I wrote quickly and posted on Facebook—poems about animals I saw on the road, dumb things I thought of, memories, fantasies. Pretty much, well, fluff.
In the latter section, Wolferel (a word I’ve proudly coined, by the way—I’m waiting for you, OED!), are lines that are (I hope) beyond Doggerel but (I fear) not quite Poetry. They lie in the demilitarized zone, in the twilight zone (is it night? or day?), in Purgatory … I’m getting excessive. Anyway, they are lines I worked on a bit, lines that (at the time I posted them) I was a bit proud of. As I look at them now, I’m a little less confident. Oh well. I should have learned by now: never look over something you’ve already published! How quickly can pride segue into shame …
Anyway, I hope you enjoy yet another voyage on the good ship Doggerel. I have fun every day, thinking about and writing these. May you enjoy a fraction of that pleasure!

—Daniel Dyer, April 3, 2018 (the ninth birthday of our grandson Carson!)

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