Recommendations

When someone offers you a sincere book recommendation, or better yet, a gift of a book they've read, it's a good idea to take it. It is a gift not only of a possibly great read, but maybe a glimpse of a hidden part of someone dear to you. Or may reveal something about life worth discovering. Maybe even your life in particular.

Jeff and I from time to time offer each other book recommendations. Sometimes, I just pick up a book I know Jeff loved.

A few years ago, Jeff had a book review published of Frank Mc Court's Teacher Man. (It was a very positive review). You'd think I'd have read it before, since Jeff was a public high school teacher for ten years, and now teaches people to become teachers.

I have been given a gift of time this week, and have squandered some of it reading books. Today, sprinkling a few chores in, I read that entire book.

I am not a teacher. I am married to a teacher, but I am not cut out for that profession. I enjoyed the book, but I can only vicariously identify with the teacher stuff, by way of being the wife that for 10 years was entertained at the dinner table by teacher stories.

But the book did speak to me, in its unmasking of human self-consciousness and fear. And I did identify with the writer who doesn't have the guts to write. Though obviously Mr. Mc Court got over that and proved himself a very good author.

I have no idea who reads this blog, really. I know and appreciate deeply my frequent-comment-leaver friends. To some of you who love to read (and write) and to anyone else to whom this sounds remotely interesting, I recommend this book.