I have always been a reader - I don't even know how I learned. My mother thought I was pretending and had memorized something someone had read to me. She was very irritated, so I tried not to let anyone know I could read. Odd for a little child, I think. I always felt that teachers really didn't want me to read unless I read what they told me to, but mother sent a note to school and the public library saying I should read anything I wanted. On the other hand, she would tell me to "get your nose out of that book and go out and play". It was all rather confusing and I still don't understand.
I recently finished this book and recommend it to you. But not if it bothers you to read about illness and surgery and bodily functions! It is, I think, all part of life and reading just about anything teaches us something about living or about how we have lived. Within the first few pages Verghese writes "Life is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward." He does have the ability to 'turn a phrase' that speaks to me and, I imagine, to a lot of others as his book is a best seller. If you need further prompting just Google his name and read some of the information about him. I enjoyed this interview: http://tinyurl.com/2wdr2fd
2 comments:
Have you read Oxygen, by Carol Cassella? It's about an anesthesiologist. Not a "happy" book, but one that I found fascinating.
As a child I could always be found with my nose in a book. I was glad to change schools in 6th grade, because I'd read "all the books" at my first school. (I'd read everything I could find that remotely interested me...) :)
Good memories. :)
I'm going to have to check out this book -- I'm compiling a list for when I'm down.
And my mother read while she ironed -- not easy to do, although a lot of what she read was poetry, which I think she was memorizing as she ironed. In our family, ironing was a large part of chores, so she had lots of opportunities. I read while I set the table and brushed my teeth, ignoring the snide comments from siblings and sharp comments from my father, who was sure I'd drop the book in the gravy. I did, too, but I never told.
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