Common Book Convocation

Yesterday was the common book convocation, and Tom Piazza, author of City of Refuge, was at Otterbein to address the freshman class. I didn't particularly enjoy the book, I thought the characters were two dimensional, and it was too easy to tell which characters he prefered over the other. At certain points during the book, I felt that he was telling us too blatantly how to feel about events or people. The only character that had real, believable inner dialogue was Craig, whom he clearly identified with the most.  Needless to say, I was not expecting to enjoy the convocation, but I found Tom Piazza to be interesting, comical and clever. I was pleasantly surprised when he became emotional while talking about Katrina and all the destruction it caused. I had never heard someone speak about the disaster the way he did-- enough time had passed that he could speak eloquently and concisely about it, but he still had close personal attachments to New Orleans in many ways. It was clear that he really loved New Orleans the way that Craig did, and I appreciated that.