It's Valentine's and I'm cozied up to a warm cup of Midnight Blue tea listening to Life in a Glasshouse by Radiohead at Victrola. It's perfect.
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| Reading Ishmael at the Broadview branch library. |
I finished Ishmael today.
What an interesting and completely unexpected book. I knew next to nothing about it before picking it up. My friend Christina gave it to me in 2008. A couple years later, when a writing professor from Valparaiso was staying at our house, it came up in conversation. She eyed it on our big bookshelf and said her students often talked it up in class. She was curious what the fuss was as all about. I told her I'd read about 10 or so pages and wasn't compelled to read further. Thus making it, even two more years later, an excellent candidate for Read a Book a Week month.
When I posted on Facebook that I was currently reading Ishmael I received some interesting comments from a cluster of people I've met at during different decades of my timeline, people whom I have admired, and who know nothing of each other:
- "I read it for the first time in high school shortly after it came out. it held up pretty well shortly after college but I have since read some of his other books and he has one really good argument. But I am not sure it can really sustain more than one book. Ishmael is by far the best."
- "I love Ishamel!!!! I read that in high school! Oh I love that book!"
- "Read that many moons ago! Such a good one!"
Melissa, or perhaps it was Jamie, offered that Ishmael was one of those books that develops a cult following like the Celestine Prophecy or The Secret. I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
Then Melissa sent me a email asking what kind of book was I reading. Her email contained a link to an article published in the Christian Science Monitor: "My Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn: Why did gunman James Jae Lee embrace this book?
Curious indeed.
