A Joy of Life.

Technology savvy I am not. This is a post for me to play around with adding pictures. This is of Julie, me and Jenna last July at the Eagle and Child in Oxford, England. (Did you read the New York Times travel section today? It's mentioned on the front page.) This is where The Inklings, Tolkein, CS Lewis and friends, would meet to talk literature. Needless to say, besides the fact that we spent our entire trip traipsing around the English countryside reading and drinking tea, being the nerds that we are, we were quite excited to visit the pub where our literary heroes met.

Sigh. I think that's half the reason why I love my job so much. I get to talk with kids about books all the time. It is amazing to watch the way that reading can change the way we view so much of the world. I belong to a somewhat overachieving book club. We meet every week in Brooklyn after school. We have processed through topics that otherwise would have no real voice in my life: post-colonial India, the role of memory, the Black Plague, what motivates people to action. I walk away thinking every time.

So, if you haven't gotten the hint yet, here are a few book club recommendations:

Atonement by Ian McEwan
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Or, here are my current books on deck. Let me know if you want to read:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (my book club's next pick)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (teaching it to the kids!)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Go read with someone. Seriously.