September 1, Monday Afternoon, Labor Day -- Reading Dr. Alexander Elder

At Crissy Field

Reading Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading, by Dr. Alexander Elder. His favorite book -- The Bible. Something good he's been reading recently--Bangkok Eight, by John Burdett. If he were to write his own book, it'd be about his life.

Question-- More often than not, when I ask people what their own book would be about, they say it'd be about their life. And, I know from the way they say it and from the look in their eye, that it really would be fascinating, but, when I ask 'what would make people want to read it?', 'What would you write about?', modesty takes over. Though I try to probe, I always feel like I'm being invasive, that if they wanted to tell me, they'd just come out and tell me. Sooooo, I ask it to you, what would your book be about? Brag about yourself! What makes you special?

5 Comments:

Jess said...

My dreams make me special. While most people remember one or two dreams a week, I remember two or three from each night. They are vivid and interesting. As I was describing a dream to a friend a few days ago, she said that my dreams would make great movies. Also, I have become a pretty good liar. (Luckily, I generally use this power for good instead of evil.) :)

Barb said...

My book would be a series of essays. I'm not a writer of stories but I love to write on a topic at hand.

I think the art of developing one's opinion in a thoughtful, positive way with the goal of getting other people to think and respond is being lost. We read the paper, our magazines, our blogs, but do we use them to then think and decide for ourselves?

Imagine the country when the written word was the main word. It took days or months for word to travel. Think of the Revolution and the people who made it happen.
They were orators who spoke from their hearts and minds. Their words went to a few, and then the words were published to a few more. Doesn't that seem so much better?

Today we have sound bites, orchestrated conventions, nothing said that hasn't been approved by someone else. And, if someone does misspeak, we demolish them, rightfully or not, so that noone else wants to speak. The human has been taken out of our communication. I miss that.

I love this blog because you give me topics to think about, to write about, and, often, to continue to think about long after I have jotted it down. Thank you!

Marit said...

My life, maybe? Born in Norway but a a dutch citizen. Grown up in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and the States. Now living in Holland. Having had leprosy, having a son with hemofilia....
There are plenty of people out there with similar experiences in growing up in different places though, so I'm not that special!
Instead of writing a book about my life, now I just blog about it!

Anonymous said...

I'm special because I have really cool siblings.

Sonya Worthy said...

Thanks for your stories!