Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder spoke at the school where I work the other day.  This was a pretty big deal.  It's Tracy Kidder!  Pulitzer Prize winning author!  I was looking forward to hearing him talk.

I have not read anything by Tracy Kidder, shame on me.  I actually have Strength in What Remains, his newest book, sitting on my bookshelf.  I totally meant to read it before I saw him speak.  Really I did.  But there was always a YA book I wanted to read first getting in my way.  I swear, as soon as I'm done with Sapphique, I will read it.  It's good to read an adult, nonfiction book every now and then.

The talk, I'm sorry to say, was a disappointment.  Tracy Kidder is not a good public speaker.  Not at all.  And I was surprised, which isn't really fair.  I guess I just assumed, that being Tracy Kidder, he must have to give speeches and talks and lectures and do interviews all the time.  And if he wasn't a good speaker, he'd take lessons and learn how to be one so he could present himself well.  This was not the case.  The speech sounded very canned.  He was reading off a paper the whole time, and despite this, it felt disorganized and confused.  He kept going off on tangents and then getting back to his shaky main point.  How could he be reading from a script but still be totally disorganized?  It just didn't make sense.