At Kezar Stadium, while his wife finishes her run in the park
Reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen. He's been at his job for a few years and saw this as a way to get more done.
His favorite book of all time--The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. He's read it twenty or thirty times--it's so well written, thorough, compact, and short enough to read in one sitting. He said that Hemingway committed suicide because he couldn't write something as good as this book.
Other favorites--Shogun, by James Clavell and A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.
When he was a kid, he didn't read, not until he was eighteen, when he picked up Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. After that it was The Chronicles of Narnia, which he read in a day and a half and then The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
His own book--it'd be about the meaning behind relationships.
Have you read The Old Man and the Sea?
4 Comments:
Why, no, I have not! A Moveable Feast is one of my favorite books, but that's the total of my Hemingway reading. I do believe I will alter that fact; thanks for the nudge!
I taught it to seventh and eighth graders for years. Of course, much of it was missed, but I still have students who come to me to tell me they never forgot the word perseverance that I taught with it. Some kids loved the story, mostly boys, read it overnight. It always made me happy that they could connect with it in some way. It's one of those books that can be taught at so many levels because there are so many levels to it. Mine was the story line and perseverance.
Me? I saw it as a shorter Moby Dick (which I never really read. I had to read it for a college class and I would fall asleep. Every time I tried to read it, I was off, so then I skipped pages and pages, and what a surprise! He was always still after the fish.) But it was so much better just because it was short and was so tightly woven.
The Old Man and the Sea also reminds me, as a teacher, of The Pearl. I couldn't stand that book either, but it is such a good book for teaching.
I got tagged by a fellow blogger with the "Brillante Weblog" award (sorta like chain letters for blogs, I know) and I had to nominate seven other worthy bloggers who I read regularly... and I chose you! Just stop by Fermented Fur and copy the image, then post it to your blog and nominate seven others. We gotta share the love!
I have read The Old Man and the Sea but could never figure out why it was such a classic. Sure, there's symbolism, but that, and the plot, could have been told in a short story.
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