I Thought My Father Was God
And Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project
Paul Auster, editor
Henry Holt & Co.
hardcover
383 pagescopacetic price - $10.00
This is a great book to give as a gift. It is a unique blend of voices from all over the country. Do you remember the old series that ran in every issue of Reader's Digest, where reader's would submit true stories and anecdotes, titled Life In These United States? Well this is sort of like the ultimate book length version. Once you have this, you're done. It can be picked up and read, here and there, over and over again, for years and years.
Sarah Fox of Rain Taxi Online Review of Books has this to say:
"There are so many stories, so many incredible narratives, and there isn't a single one that elicits doubt from the reader as to the veracity of its author's telling. This is one of those books you simply can't check out of the library because it'll end up long overdue, you may even be willing to lose your library card to keep it, and so everybody--not least the librarians who've been hiding it under their table for surreptitious glimpses--will be terribly upset with you. It's one of those books you simply have to own, and one--despite its bulk--you'll never be tempted to part with. It will sit on your shelf alongside Vasari's Lives of the Artists and The Golden Bough and Alan Lomax's Folk Songs of North America, the big-time keepers you occasionally pick up on your way to the bathroom, and end up hours later still holding open in your lap. This is the book you can buy for every single person on your gift list, from the highest to the lowest brow. It is, at last, a genuine People's History of the United States, written by the people themselves, a 180-voiced chorus of women and men, young and old, rural and urban and everything in between, singing the body electric."
retail price - $25.00
copacetic price - $10.00 - THAT'S 60% OFF - and 1/3 less than the paperback!
Copacetic Commodities
prices and availability current as of 1 November 2004
