Happy Birthday, Roger Angell!

Happy Birthday, Roger Angell! Writer and editor Roger Angell turns 92 today. You may salute his many books on baseball. Or you may revere the gilded list of fiction writers he edits at the  New Yorker. I love him for  this personal essay  about his stepfather, E. B. White, one of the most significant, poignant musings on love and mortality Ive ever encountered. Lately I have been missing my stepfather, Andy White, who keeps excusing himself while he steps out of the room to get something from his study or heads out the back kitchen door, on his way to the barn again. He’ll be right back, Angell begins. I can hear the sound of that gray doorâ€"the steps there lead down into the fragrant connecting woodshedâ€"as the lift-latch clicks shut. E. B. White died in 1985â€"twenty years ago, come Octoberâ€"and by missing I don’t mean yearning for him so much as not being able to keep hold of him for a bit of conversation or even a tone of voice. Keep reading. And we lift our baseball cap to you. Sign up to Today In Books to receive  daily news and miscellany from the world of books. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.