The best of both worlds

I just finished reading a collection of Jennifer Weiner's short stories, entitled "The Guy Not Taken." Like anything she writes, I was immediately addicted and flew through the stories easily. It was a pleasure to read something not related to blended learning for the first time in a while.

What I like especially about her writing, in addition to the references to Philadelphia, is how accurately it reflects real life. The humor that she brings to any telling, from her short stories to her novels to her blog, make me want to get to know her as a person, because we could be BFFs. Especially reading these short stories, with notes that indicate how they blossomed from her life experiences over the past 15+ years, her life turned out the way I'd imagined mine would when I was 18. Granted, I don't have the Ivy League education, divorced parents (thank goodness), Jewish culture or love of tiny dogs. Other than that, we're like twins.

But my life isn't like that. I didn't do the writing thing, or the NYC thing, or the newspaper thing. I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I had. I often wonder if I could have handled that life and what kind of person I would be now if I'd tried.

The beautiful thing is, I can live that life, through Jennifer Weiner's writing. It is truly a vicarious experience for me. I can live that life, yet still remain content and happy in my own and the avenues that it has taken.

And that reminds me of a poem we had to memorize in 6th grade:

Books fall open, you fall in,
delighted where you've never been;
hear voices not once heard before,
reach world on world through door on door;
find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings.
What might you be, perhaps become, because one book is somewhere?

Some wise delver into wisdom, wit, and wherewithal has written it.
True books will venture, dare you out,
whisper secrets, maybe shout
across the gloom to you in need,
who hanker for a book to read. – David McCord

I'm proud that I could still repeat the first stanza without a prompt! The power of memorization. It also reminds me that I want to read the new Billy Collins. And now, for my encore...old Abe or the Northern Lights or the old Home and School standby?