No. 47 - Reading "A Man without a Country" Again
I’ve been looking for a secondhand copy of this book for a while.
Years ago, I downsized my life to move into an RV. This was when minimalism had completely taken hold of me. I took pictures of all of my books before taking them all to my brother’s house, saying, “Take what you want, and sell the rest.”
After seven years in our land yacht, we’ve settled in a cozy apartment in Nashville. In this apartment, I have - gasp - bookshelves, and it took no time at all for my life to go from “ebooks only” to physical books on shelves.
In fact, as I type this, there are books on the floor, because I am out of shelf space.
This is a long way of telling you that I found a copy at McKay’s two weeks ago, and I wasted no time reading it.
I’ll be honest - I wanted to write a poignant essay about how the essays in this book remain applicable to current events, despite being written in 2005. I wanted to fill a blog post with quotes and give a proper analysis of the work.
But instead of doing that, I'm just going to tell you to read it. Read it once to meet the text, and then read it again to commune with it.
If you can’t find a copy at your local library:
Get a copy from your favorite independent bookseller - https://bookshop.org/lists/reading-in-public-2025
Get a copy from Amazon - https://amzn.to/42yifmR