This is my third summer reading the Farragut High School summer book selection. I will be reading the summer book selection for about the next 7 summers (8 including this year). The first year it was Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass, Last Summer it was 2 of Elie Wiesel’s trilogy Dawn, Day and Night. I read the complete trilogy and required my son to read all three.
This year was the 173 plus page Einstein’s Dreams written by Alan Lightman. It is a quick read. It is Lightman’s first work of fiction and is very thought provoking. This will be a book that will maintain a permanent home in my office for those times when I need to contemplate thoughts, wonders and the American Way. LOL.
By far this was the most enjoyable of the three thus far. Elie Weisel was a first hand account of the holocaust and was troublesome. Death’s Acre was the worst thus far. If you want to go back that far in the archives of Brian’s Blog you can read my review of Death’s Acre.
You are lucky you got a copy. I went to Borders to get one for my son and was told they have to reorder. They have sold slighly over 200 copies. They were having troubling getting more from publisher.
The most frequently mentioned skills lacking in graduates accordingly to local survey’s of business are “crictical thinking and problem solving”. These are the very skills that the system lacks. FHS puts this book on a list for 2000 students to read. Did they contact the book stores in advance to make sure they would be in supply? Maybe they could have contacted the publisher directly — got a discount and sold it to famlies before the summer began.
These are the type of “school situations” that tell me the system is currently not capable of meeting the need to train people to be successful in the 21st Century. When I think of all the wasted time of 2000 parents going to the store to pick up a book that could have been distributed directly, it makes me sick. It is this lack of inefficiency that needs to be stopped. We need to hire the very best leadership possible for the new superintedent.
Pamela,
I agree that FHS should do more coordination when they announce the Summer book.Even in the front of this book, the publisher encourages schools and companies to purchase in bulk supply. FHS could have made $5 a book for the school granted that is only $10,000 dollars, sigh.
I have experienced what you are experiencing and I do not even attempt to purchase at the local book stores due to the 2000 demand and 200 supply. I purchased my two copies from Amazon.com