On My Bookshelf: Professor Andres Alonso

[caption id="attachment_13577" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo by Jill Anderson"]

Currently reading: I'm planning a course about urban school reform in the spring, so I am reading a lot of books on education reform. I'm an impatient reader and like the sense of different perspectives talking to each other, so I end up reading chapters from different open books at the same time, rather than concentrating on one book at a time. Right now, I'm reading Jal Mehta's The Allure of Order, Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error, and Seymour Sarason's The Predictable Failure of School Reform as some kind of crazy puzzle where the parts eventually fit.

First impressions: I love the Sarason book without reservation. Jal has ideas that resonate with me. Ravitch is the [film critic] Pauline Kael of education writing — same polarizing energy, but about schools rather than movies. I love schools and I love movies, so I see the connection.

Favorite book from childhood: The Three Musketeers ruled my imagination. My father bought me four books before I started school that were meant for a much older kid, and over time they became my other favorite books. One, Hombrecitos by R.P. Garrold — a long-forgotten writer — I found in a used book store in Toledo, Spain, through the web three years ago, after four decades searching for it. As an adolescent I fell in love with Tolstoy — War and Peace and the field scene from Anna Karenina, of course.

Reading rituals: I dog-ear pages, even when the book is borrowed. Some people have gotten very annoyed by it, but I can't break the habit.

Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: The Outer Banks! Barnegat Light in the Jersey Shore is a close second. I like porches.

How you find the time: I think I have a lot of time now, maybe because reading is built into what I do for a living. Try being an urban superintendent for a day, and you'll understand how my sense of time for reading has changed.