I started a very good book earlier this month. I don't have much time to read it, unfortunately, which is why I am not finished with it yet. I was skeptical about how insightful it would be simply because it is written by an actor. However, I flipped through the pages while in Barnes and Noble as I contemplated buying it, and saw "Marty McFly" flash by my eyes. I had to get this!
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| Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in "Back to the Future" |
I am a big fan of
Back to the Future and an even bigger fan of Michael J. Fox's, so this book would seem like a no-brainer. The title is a fun one as well - "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future... Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned." I, of course, thought if it is a Michael J. Fox book and mentions Marty McFly, it has to be worth the Barnes and Noble bargain priced $5.
Well, even though I am only about half-way through the book, it is surprisingly insightful already. I am learning new things about this actor that I thought I knew so much about. I'm also realizing school is worth every penny, but maybe not in the ways I'm using them.
Not to give too much away, it is a memoir unlike many others. The chapters are short, but they are filled with knowledge. This high school drop out named Michael moves to Los Angeles to become a big Hollywood actor, and he learns many things usually contained to textbooks outside in the real world. I am learning new things about life and school with every turn of the page.
If you get a chance, read it. It's not a deep read, but it's an interesting, fun and (as I've said multiple times) fairly insightful read. To end on a quote I found powerful: "But what's happening to you right now, precisely at this instant, belongs only to you. Own it."
Hi Chelsea, thanks for your three posts. I'll have to look for the Fox book. I think he is particularly courageous dealing with his Parkinson's disease. I like the last quote too. I liked your first post about printed books having life in them. They will continue to have life for a long time. but there are entire generations of digital natives growing up thinking that books are archaic. Interesting times. The two technologies, print and digital, will overlap for a long time. dw
ReplyDeleteSpeaking on Professor William's point regarding the overlap of digital and print it makes one consider their place in the span of the transforming information era. I think the 20th century will be marked as the atomic era, as our understanding of the subatomic particle transformed our world for generations. However the atomic era ends, in my opinion, in 1995 when restriction on commercial traffic were removed from the internet, opening the internet for widespread public use. After 1995 we began the information era, appropriately titled due to the incredible proliferation of information being published, exchanged, and accessed.
ReplyDeleteThere is a fact I hear sometimes that I can not exactly nail down but having heard it so often I can re-iterate the gist of it that goes something like; Today the world will generate more pieces of information than the human race was able to generate in the last 10,000 years put together. Now, my "fact" being hard to verify may be anything but, however assuming it is true this is astonishing and indicates how unprecedented our current technological and informational technology has become. Which begs the question, should we be wary of the proliferation of information?
I really liked this post. I liked how you wrote about how insightful reading can be. Even though we learn so much from the digital world, there is still a great deal that we can learn from books. Even though you see an actor on screen, it doesn't mean that you know anything about him personally. Yet, we make a judgement call about actors as individuals based off of their performances in movies. This kind of reminds me of the discussion we had about the author as two different people. The actor can be quite the same. For example the name we've Anne Hathaway and the person Anne Hathaway are two separate people.
ReplyDeleteIt's very true that there is that distinction between a person and the career. It used to be that I always thought of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly or Mike Flaherty from the TV show "Spin City" whenever I saw him, but eventually I grew to understand the difference. Knowing that distinction comes with many different things, including age, but one major element that helps make this distinction is reading. Reading about the person, even if it's in People magazine, helps us understand that line between the person and the career.
ReplyDeleteRobert, your comment was so thought-provoking. I hadn't ever thought about how much information we put out there in relation to the past. Your facts might not be backed up, but I'm sure it is not far from the truth. We are constantly putting out information, whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, news sites or printed books and magazines. It really is amazing how much information we consume on a daily basis. It reminds me of how much reading we all really do on a regular basis as well. We've talked about it in class how we are constantly reading, even if we don't think about it. Anytime we go on Facebook or Twitter or even create a meme, we are reading. No matter how the information is presented, we will be reading and interpreting it to get the necessary knowledge.
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