"Home and Away"

"Amazon Prime" has won me over.

I was listening to Scott Simon on "Morning Edition" Saturday when he tweeted something about his memoir Home and Away, which I'd not previously known of. Impulsively I ordered it, and here I am less than two days later, on MLK Day, just $3 poorer and reading Simon's account of how that horrible day in Memphis in 1968 seared the young author and NPR reporter-to-be in Chicago.

That's in the chapter called "Cubbie Love." Simon mentions King's "creative tension," which I mentioned in my post this morning.

And the book arrived with a bonus: an envelope stuck in the middle, postmarked "Oxford, U.K" and return addressed from "The Queen's College/Oxford." Page notes are scribbled all over it. It's addressed to a reporter at the Globe in Boston.

It looks to be a terrific memoir, and a fine evocation of what Scott Turow calls in his blurb a portrait of "the powerful personal mythology that every dedicated sports fan creates for him or herself." I think I have my topic for the next "Baseball & Literature" conference.

And, I think I'm going to trust more of my impulses from now on.