Myself and Strangers
A Memoir of Apprenticeship

I highly recommend the three books for which Graves is known: Goodbye to a River, Hardscrabble, and From a Limestone Ledge. This memoir, however, won’t really add anything to your appreciation of those works. While it gave me an unexpected perspective on Graves and his development as a writer, I fou......more

Favorite Quote (he's discussing off-shore fishing): Nor was such a team endeavor, aided by the boats powerful motors, an agreeable kind of angling to me, being too far removed from the personal poking about on rivers and creeks and salt inlets that has always been my favored form of the sport.†(22......more

Graves reads his journal and comments on young John from old John's perspective. Not so much about writing, but about the characters and places that came to shape some of his writing.......more

A classic man’s man post WW2 memoir. Graves personifies the traveling writer; macho, adventure seeking, well-read x-pat, mixing with affluent travelers. His writing is heavily influenced by Hemingway’s crisp, cut to the chase prose. But somehow, Graves seems more innocent, more imperfect, more perso......more