This Book Will Change Your Life - When I First Held You, Edited by the Brian Gresko.

Are we still required to put our biases and caveats on the table? Remind you that we are drawn to dad writers and writing on fatherhood? Partial to personal essays? Or feel great affection for the writer Brian Gresko? Can we in fact, even objectively riff on When I First Held You, the new anthology edited by Gresko that comes with the subtitled: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About The Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experiences of Fatherhood? And does it even matter? Good writing is good writing is good writing regardless, yes? We think so, and writing that touches on so much that is so human, death, joy, triumph, sadness, change, sickness, aging, and yes, transformation, but also happens to use the trope of parenting, and being parented, to get there, should appeal to all, shouldn't it? It should, and it will, because we all know all of it, at some time, and in some way. We are alive, and we love, and hurt, and so we know all of this, and we feel it, and this collection is a window to all of that. Now, that said, we are also biased to runners and rage and dead dads, and so even among a collection we collectively love we still want to take a moment to single out the pieces by Andre Dubus III, Benjamin Percy, Garth Stein, and Alexi Zentner, triumphs all, and all certain to change your life. We also want to take a moment to commend the Brian Gresko for breathing this collection to life, no small chore that, and let you know in advance that we recently had the chance to podcast with Brian, we will be running it soon, it is certain to change your life as well, and no, there is no bias there either.