My Friday Post: The John Lennon Letters edited and with an Introduction by Hunter Davies

Published on by Margaret

Book Beginnings Button

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I’m reading The John Lennon Letters edited and with an Introduction by Hunter Davies.

John Lennon

The reaction of John Lennon to most things, whether joy or anger, fear or loathing, fun or fury, was to write it down. He responded with words, not just music.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

An organized Beatles’ fan club existed long before they had received any national attention or had even produced a record, which is surprising, but shows the extent of their success and popularity when on paper they had achieved so little. From 1962, they were writing lots of letters on fan club notepaper.

Blurb:

A lifetime of letters, collected for the first time, from the legendary The Beatles musician and songwriter John Lennon

John Lennon is one of the world’s greatest-ever song writers, creator of ‘Help!’, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘Imagine’ and dozens more. Now, his letters have been collected and published, illuminating as never before the intimate side of a private genius.

Hunter Davies, author of the only authorised biography of The Beatles, has tracked down almost three hundred of Lennon’s letters and postcards – to relations, friends, fans, strangers, lovers and even to the laundry. Some of the letters are tender, informative, funny, angry and abusive, and some are simply heart-breaking – from his earliest surviving thank-you note, written when he was ten, to his last scribbled autograph given on 8 December 1980, the day he was shot, aged forty.

~~~

A trip down memory lane!

Have you read this book? What did you think?

16 thoughts on “My Friday Post: The John Lennon Letters edited and with an Introduction by Hunter Davies”

  1. Oh, I would love to read this one, Margaret. I hope you’re enjoying it a lot, because it sounds like such an interesting perspective on Lennon and his world! I’ll be very interested in what you thought of this one…

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I am enjoying this very much, Margot. Davies has done so much research in finding the letters, contacting the recipients and he has used them to tell the story of John’s life.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. I think I would like this just for the history of it!

    I’ve gathered several books of letters on my TBR shelf, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them. I’m fascinated by the idea, but I always think, oh, I should read the person’s biography first to learn more about them before I read the letters. I think I need to just dive in.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I bet my uncle would love this book. He loves everything Beatles, especially John Lennon related. Lennon was such a gifted songwriter, wasn’t he? I hope you have a great weekend!

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I would think this will be incredibly interesting. John Lennon was just about my first schoolgirl crush, I would have been 11 when I first saw The Beatles on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Happy days.

    Liked by 1 person

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