Getting to know Henry, Tom and Jessye
The Unknown Henry Miller: A Seeker in Big Sur by Arthur Hoyle
Hoyle recounts Miller's career, focusing on his time in Big Sur from 1944 to 1961. It was during this period that Miller wrote many of his most significant works. He also married and divorced twice, raised two children, painted watercolors, and tried to live an aesthetic and personal doctrine of self-realization. This was written with the cooperation of the Henry Miller and Anais Nin estates.
Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins
Counter-cultural icon Robbins covers the significant benchmarks of his life: childhood troublemaking, passionate travels around the world, and jumping down rabbit holes on LSD. He always knew he wanted to write: as a child he won a radio in a raffle and sold it for books. Now in his eighties, he continues to embody Zen coolness and bohemian charm telling his life story with his trademark helical prose.
Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman
This is a lovely memoir by the very private soprano and National Medal of Arts recipient who was raised in a supportive but segregated world. Norman takes readers from her close-knit childhood community in Georgia (Jim Crow south) to star of the world’s grandest stages. The most fascinating parts of the book detail her friendship with icon Marian Anderson and singing for Rosa Parks.
Jane @ King