Burn, June. Living High: an Unconventional Autobiography. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941.
I like books that make me ask questions. I like books that leave me wanting more. Not more of the story. Usually, the ending is adequate enough and I don’t need to know more about that. I am left wanting to know more about the author, about the life of the author at that time. Such was the case with June Burn. When I read Living High I held in my hands a first edition copy signed by June herself. Maddeningly, there were no pictures to guide my imagination. How old was she when she finished Living High? Where were her parents? What did she looked like? I pictured a fiery redhead with an unmatchable zest for life. But, I wanted the truth of who she was.
Living High is called an “Unconventional Autobiography” and I would have to agree. Not because it doesn’t cover a life from the sunrise of birth to the sunset of death, but because it has a moral to the story. There is a lesson to be learned within Living High’s pages and that lesson is live life to the fullest. Enjoy every single moment of each and every day. June is elegant and adventurous when describing living on the gumdrop island of Sentinel off Puget Sound with her husband, Farrar; or remembering walrus hunting and dogsledding in Alaska; or later, bombing around the west coast in the Burn’s Ballad Bungalow with Farrar and two kids (named North and South, I kid you not).
Best quotes: “Be thrifty with the things that count and you won’t have time to worry about whether your wallet is fullor not” (p 7), “To go on an island and pull the ladder up after us and live, untroubled by anything – that would be heaven” (p 11), and “the wind came howling out of the north, with icicles in its whiskers” (p 150). My favorite is, “When you walk you are somewhere at every step” (p 264).
Interesting side note: June changed her name and so did her second son, South. One day he decided he was Bobby or Bob.
BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Living High in Cascadia” (p 149). Go figure.
~*LunaSea*~ 