Building Block Books

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Jet Pack Prompt – 6/7/23

Throughout different stages of my life, my favorite books seemed to guide me as a trusting friend. From growing up in Northeast Ohio and South Florida nurtured by my love of reading at public schools, through my formative years of academic growth at several universities and now embracing the precious moments of “now”in retirement, my books have always been critically important to me. So I recognize that three books stand out for me most in my logical progression through each of these lifetime eras. How gratifying it seems to me in retrospect that each literary work described below somehow chose me in timely fashion when I most needed them to appear.

1. The Cat In The Hat/Green Eggs and Ham – Dr. Seuss

My love of reading undoubtedly took hold with my first exposure to the whimsically funny characters, creatively unusual words and fun to speak rhymes of Dr. Seuss from the time I was five years old. For as one example, I can vividly recall walking out of the public library each week in elementary grade years carrying long stacks of these classic picture books with me. How fun reading seemed to be then as I spent so much time with Dr. Seuss in my spare time. 

2. The Tortilla Curtain – T.C. Boyle

My aspirations to teach in an urban educational setting coincided with my burgeoning interest in becoming proficient at reaching those heavy multicultural challenges I faced in South Florida schools and universities. No book I read in those years thus personifies how deeply invested in the diverse student populace I faced than T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. For his engaging plot and characterization graphically exposed the issue of Mexican newcomers struggling to survive in a white dominant area in Southern California facing continual racist attacks concerning their so called inferior status. Such senseless negativism in the mainstream community moved me emotionally to no ends as I learned to refine my language teaching methods as an ESOL professor to advocate positive diversity awareness specific to the different countries I would face each semester.

3. The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield

Since retirement from teaching, my extensive travels have increasingly sensitized me to spiritual ideas rooted in multiple ancient Eastern traditions and New Age spirituality. A common thread of each of these ideologies involves having a strong belief in finding positive energy within oneself in the moment to moment experience of “now.”  So it happens that nowadays I often refer back to my reading of James Redfield’s, The Celestine Prophecy. For when I seek strong guidance as to my life’s purpose, the main character of this novel comes immediately to mind. For here lies a wandering man like myself traveling through distant lands of Peru discovering several insights for living his life more fully when encountering coincidence and other chance encounters in the present moment of travel. In fact, these lessons learned in the Celestine Prophecy inspired me to pursue my present blog theme known as “Snippets of A Traveling Mind.”