Childhood Dreams

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." --Randy Pausch

I seem to always be in the process of reading several books---fortunately, most of them good. A good inspirational/motivational book I read earlier this year was the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. In case you haven't heard of it yet, it is written by a professor who gave his students a "last lecture" as some professors do, only he is expecting this to really be his "last" lecture because he is terminally ill. (As of right now, he's still alive.) It was all about living, not dying and titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". The lecture was video-taped and ended up on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo ) and became extremely popular, so popular that Diane Sawyer interviewed him for an ABC news special. He wrote this book: not only about the lecture, about fulfilling childhood dreams and helping others with their dreams, but also about life lessons he's passing on to his children and others. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a long article on him and on what has grown to become a phenomenon. This was a really good book, one that you want to keep reading and not put down. I especially liked learning about Alice, http://www.alice.org/ , a novel idea: educational software which makes learning computer programming fun; I also liked the stories about the Disney salt and pepper shakers. My favorite story would have to be the one about his really creative use of Girl Scout Thin Mints, which I thought was such a great idea (I won't tell you what it is in case you haven't read the book yet!); he really is clever. Before I finished the book, I told a friend that I was surprised because I thought it was going to be one of those books that I'd be crying all the way through it but I hadn't teared up at all---but of course I spoke too soon.....at the very end I had to break out the tissues! This is definitely a book worth reading!