Sunday, February 11, 2007

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.

8 comments:

cps said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cps said...

you all are beeeautiful. those books sound great! i'll be finishing 'ali and nino' though, which i think you would love if you want to participate in pre-WWI azerbaijan (and i think you do). forbidden love between a persian muslim boy and a georgian christian girl? good stuff.
-carolyn

Liz said...

Atonement is amazing. Loved that book. And, To Kill a Mockingbird is my fave book of all time :) Good picks!

Amulya said...

The God of Small Things has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time. I'm a sucker for titles by Indian authors. Read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri if you haven't already. It's a bit mainstream by now, which usually turns me off, but it's still quite good.
And To Kill a Mockingbird is awesome...as is the movie based upon it which is very rare.

ylmurph said...

what about Grisham? it's like you're forgetting one of the greats...

hello

Stephen King?
um...that guy who makes the chicken soup books...

Kristen Robbins Warren said...

who keeps deleting comments? seriously.

cps said...

that was me and it was the same thing, just twice. as a lovely woman i know once said, "technology savvy i am not."

except in general i am. just not in that case.

but that was my only deleted comment.

sorry!

carolyn p.

Kristen Robbins Warren said...

:) gracias for the update carolyn! i hope i didn't sound like a brat--that is the other thing that technology is no good for...conveying tone!