I don’t exactly remember, but I think I heard about Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal because some publishing-related newsletter I subscribe to for work reasons linked to this article about the way this book lets readers interact via text message and via its website. When I saw it at the library, it seemed like it would be a very nice thing to read right now, and it totally was. It’s structured sort of like a textbook, with chapters called “units” covering such topics as Language Arts, Geography, Social Studies, and more, with multiple choice questions and sidebars about particular words/topics embedded in the text along with the text-message prompts, all of which are optional but many of which are intriguing. Sometimes the prompt is just a way to get to an audio file: you text a word/phrase and get a link to, say, a recording of humming wineglasses, or of the late poet Kenneth Koch reading one of his poems. Other times, the prompt is for you to submit a photo, like this:
As for the content of the book, the subtitle is “not exactly a memoir” and that seems about right: there are a lot of autobiographical vignettes, but there are also jokes and photos and graphical representations of things in the author’s life (my favorite of which is probably “The Bar Bar Graph,” showing the frequency of kinds of bars in Krouse Rosenthal’s life: salad bars feature heavily; sports bars, not so much). I like how playful this book is, and how touching: its blend of whimsy and poignancy and interactivity is largely in a sweet spot for me, and I am a sucker for good writing about serendipity and connection and unexpected/lovely/unexpectedly lovely human interactions. Some sections felt stronger than others, and some observations fell flat (what am I supposed to do with the sentence, “You don’t really see chubby symphony conductors,” sitting alone on a page by itself?) but I liked the bits I liked much more than I disliked the bits I disliked.
Leave a Reply