Saturday, October 09, 2010

LOSING MY COOL by Thomas Chatteron Williams

Earlier this summer the Oxford American picked their favorite summer reads. 

Their list had two books I'd read, and two books I immediately wanted to read.  You might recall we actually had a little challenge to see if any of the blog readers could pinpoint which book I meant.

One of the books on the list that I ordered is Thomas Chatterton Williams' LOSING MY COOL an elegant appraisal of  "How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture." 

If you can refer to people in a non-fiction book as characters, my favorite character is Mr. Williams Senior, a man who read industriously and thoroughly his entire life but never for entertainment.  As in, never read a novel for fun.  I like to think that one of these days he'll retire and just read for the pure enjoyment of a story.

This is an odd thing to take from a serious and thoughtful book about culture, but I think it's a testament to this book that we see and care about the people in it, as much as think about things in new ways.

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