This unusual (for lack of a better name) book is, as the front cover says, “not exactly a memoir”, but “a book about…being alive.” Published in 2016 ten years after Rosenthal’s Ordinary Life, it is a mix of the author’s thoughts, musings, and feelings on “things” and life in general. The “text” in Textbook, the title, has multiple meanings. The reader can actually send a text to the author, it is a textbook divided into nine different disciplines from “Geography to ” “Language Arts,” and it often has pictures of texts the author has received. Sometimes there is only one sentence on a page; sometimes the page is blank, presumably to allow the reader to pause and think about what was just shown or written. Sometimes the text is a record of thoughts that struck Rosenthal on a facsimile/picture as follows:
In curator style, the author has aligned on the page,
“Existential Napkin
ink printed on a disposable napkin
dispensed at a local restaurant, 1999”
A picture of the napkin where Rosenthal has written follows,
“Aren’t we just trying to leave one, good, lasting thing behind?”
And hasn’t the author written one, unique textbook here?
powerfulwomenreaders 
This sounds like an extraordinary read, Rae. Thank you for sharing:).
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