David Bruce

The Coolest People in Books David Bruce

This book contains 250 anecdotes, including these:1) Young-people's author Richard Peck taught for a while, but he quit because he thought that educational stan-dards and the quality of students dropped dramatically dur-ing the 1960s. Even the brightest students were not so bright-or if they were bright, their brightness was dimmed by excessive pride. Anthropologist Margaret Mead once lectured some gifted girls at Hunter College High School, where he taught. She suggested that the girls learn real-world skills such as secretarial skills or nursing skills since such skills are useful in life-in addition to the academic work that the girls were doing. One of the students replied, "Lady, I don't think you know who we are. We aren't going to be secretaries. We're gifted!" Mr. Peck does have strong opinions. For example, he says, "Watching television is what you do with your life when you don't want to live it." 2) - Neil Gaiman, author of "Coraline," an excellent book that was made into an excellent movie, is like a rock star. His film agent, Jon Levin, discovered how popular Mr. Gaiman was when they went to a meeting at Warner Brothers. All of the secretaries asked Mr. Gaiman for his autograph, and someone pointed out, "That never happens when Tom Cruise is here." Mr. Gaiman is a true original. He proposed to his girlfriend, Amanda Palmer of the punk group the Dresden Dolls, by using a Sharpie to draw a ring on her finger.