Saturday, January 31, 2009

A Civil Action


You know how sometimes you read a book about a doctor or a nurse or a teacher or a female train magnate and you think, "Man, I really wish I were a doctor/nurse/teacher/female train magnate"?

Right now I'm reading A Civil Action, a novel on which a John Travolta movie was based. It describes this case in which a group of families sue some companies for dumping chemicals into the groundwater and inflicting the town with bad health and an unusually high incidence of leukemia, even before anyone knew that things like chemicals in groundwater could cause leukemia. It's pretty great.

But I'm reading it, and I keep thinking, "Man, I really wish I were a lawyer." And then I realize, I AM!

Also, pretty, pretty great.

(Also, lest you wonder, the stuff I do at work is actually pretty much like this. Not personal injury stuff, as in in this book, but some big cases, important. Interesting. So cool! Makes me want to go to work early on Monday.)

3 comments:

kt said...

I saw that movie. In the theatre. True story.

Petra said...

Funny, I was just going to write to you and ask how you like being a lawyer. Question answered.

Jim and Lisa said...

This book is about the town I grew up in. It's where I went to high school. I think that this case happened before my family moved there, but not by much. I recognized some of the people's last names. I think I graduated from high school with a relative of the tannery owner.