An author by the name of Dan Josefson made a visit to a
Garden City college campus by the name of Nassau Community College. He was
invited to do a reading in which he discussed his new novel entitled That’s Not A Feeling. A tall introverted
man stood in front of his audience and began to speak very low and quietly. An
onlooker could observe from his demeanor he was not officially comfortable with
speaking out to a group of college students. However, as time went on he was
more comfortable with the idea of speaking aloud to his spectators. If you are
an individual who enjoys reading books that are relevant and relatable, I would
recommend you read this particular book selection.
A
“therapeutic boarding school” is what Author Dan Josefson describes the main
setting of where his novel takes place. A place for unruly students who were
previous kicked out of a school. He opens up with giving listeners an excerpt
from the beginning of the novel to the ending of the novel. The first snippet
goes into detail about the first encounter with the current students of the
boarding school and a particularly new student. The students are outside going
around the circle introducing one another and describing the events that led up
to their acceptance into such a school. You can distinctively recognize the
rising action and the falling action when the person in charge of the school
becomes sick and starts to lose hope in his empire that he built.
The
language of the few excerpts were plain enough for a basic reader to understand
but still painted a picture of the actual scene in your mind. It is a language
that sounds relatable to teens that are troubled and adults trying to
understand them. This novel is timeless since the world will always be filled
with rebellious teenagers looking for a place to fit in.
At
the end of the reading, Josefson answered questions that related to his process
of writing. He told the audience it took an overall of six years to publish his
book from start to finish (Josefson). This time period is evident when
listening to passages from the novel because you can hear strategic details
that complement each other. He also explains that his inspiration for the book
came from his past experience working at a boarding school.
Being
a listener at an organized reading like this is an interesting task, you are
able to listen to an author whose spend years working on a book that has a
couple hundred pages to show for it. Dan Josefson is a regular humble individual. This showed me that anyone can have an
idea, turn it into a book and publish it as long as you have the ambition to do
so.
Work Cited
Josefson,
Dan. "That’s Not A Feeling"
Nassau Community College. Library, Garden City, NY. 29 October 2014. Keynote reading.
