“Well, it does not have sex in it. Danielle Steel doesn’t write that stuff.” Maybe my stereotype was floating over my head like a halo? Seems like that would be a strange halo.
Really? Went my thoughts? My expectation has always been that she does. Where did that come from? I cannot remember.
“It does have bad words in it.” She was firing these things off as I was semi-amused at my situation.
Really?
“Nothing worse than what your daughter hears at school, though.”
Oh, ok, justification. Granted my daughter is not isolated from such words, but does she need to sip on them by reading a book?
From the clinic to the fireplace 1
I think I was mainly smiling and nodding and thinking about next steps. I was humored. right now, it is at my house, on the hearth of my fireplace, facedown. Or maybe I should say face up for there is a smiling picture of Danielle Steel on the back of it. Since the book is face down she is looking up at my ceiling (or at me?).
Advice has been given to me about what I should do with this book. Well, I have read two chapters…my patient was right when she said she had just the book for me. I won’t tell you why Blue is just the book for me. Not yet anyway.
Why would I read it? I think the answer is two fold. Probably foremost is my desire to really have a reason why a thing should be read or not read. Back in the 1970s when Star Wars first tickled my imagination I was not allowed to see it. Not until my college days was I able to watch it. The answer to my “Why” was never one I could get my mental arms around. When it comes to my daughter and reading this book or those like it I want to be able to say something constructive. I want to transform it into a teaching moment where what I believe is seen as the backbone for why a thing should or should not be read. I badly want to stay away from “no-ville.”
The second reason why I am going to read it is so that I have a platform to talk with others in a similar vein. Things like these books come up where I work. I think it is far better to be able to speak meaningfully about a subject using wind from its own material to inflate balloons of good that hopefully can change behavior in and around me.
Come back here for more. I will tell you of my impressions. I will be reading it, for a while at least. I might drop it, I don’t know. I’ll let you know what happens to my stereotype; judging a book by its cover is something I’ve often been warned away from. So far only the hearth? Will it feel the heat? I don’t know.
Try back on Fridays. For now that’s when I’ll let you know!
Language issues:
I want to keep my readers posted on the language used. At the end of each lesson I will post what I recall about language generally considered unacceptable. I don’t know how much is in Steel.
Other entries in this series
Leave a Reply