Edgemont Book Club

Last week we met at Marsha's for a bookclub. We read "The Dark Room", about WWII Germany from the people's perspective. Good book for discussion.

Joseph loved to read; from the time he could crawl he would happily sit in our laps. "Good Night Moon","McElligot's Pool", "Where the Wild things are", "I Spy", "one fish, two fish", "good night, good night" etc. etc. Every night for years. And Joe listened intently. Ray read him the Toilken series all the way through by the time Joseph was six. The comic strip "Calvin and Hobbs" was a favorite. When he got to high school, "Odysseus" sang to him. In Africa we (aunts, uncles, friends) sent him hundreds of books. He loved "In the name of the rose", "king leopold's ghost", and Paul Theroux. The Economist and Science were favorite journals in Africa. He was always a voracious reader.

In the spring of 2000 I had to choose a book for book club - always a competitive offering. Joseph was a freshman at Fordham Prep, and he suggested Chinua Achebe's "Everything Falls Apart" for the book club. He insisted that if we read it, he had to be part of the discussion. So when the evening came Joseph came and sat through, and participated in our book discussion. I was so proud of him that night. He was the only child who ever came to our book club meeting for the whole discussion.

When he died the head of Peace Corp Tanzania commented on the amount of classical music in his ipod, and the number of books at his site.