{"id":8786,"date":"2016-12-09T18:53:06","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T23:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=8786"},"modified":"2016-12-09T18:53:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T23:53:06","slug":"textbook-amy-krouse-rosenthal-by-amy-krouse-rosenthaldutton-penguin-random-house-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/textbook-amy-krouse-rosenthal-by-amy-krouse-rosenthaldutton-penguin-random-house-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal by Amy Krouse RosenthalDutton (Penguin Random House), 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t exactly remember, but I think I heard about <i>Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal<\/i> because some publishing-related newsletter I subscribe to for work reasons linked to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3062982\/mind-and-machine\/ditch-your-book-club-this-ai-powered-memoir-wants-to-chat-with-you\">this article<\/a> about the way this book lets readers interact via text message and via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.textbookamykr.com\/\">its website<\/a>. 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&#8217;s structured sort of like a textbook, with chapters called &#8220;units&#8221; 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:<br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/plangently\/31423191291\/in\/dateposted\/\" title=\"Texting\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c4.staticflickr.com\/1\/447\/31423191291_2ea7cd5190.jpg\" width=\"367\" height=\"500\" alt=\"Texting\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/center><br \/>\nAs for the content of the book, the subtitle is &#8220;not exactly a memoir&#8221; 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&#8217;s life (my favorite of which is probably &#8220;The Bar Bar Graph,&#8221; showing the frequency of kinds of bars in Krouse Rosenthal&#8217;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, &#8220;You don&#8217;t really see chubby symphony conductors,&#8221; sitting alone on a page by itself?) but I liked the bits I liked much more than I disliked the bits I disliked. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}