Dreamtime: A Happy Book

(University of South Carolina Press) In this collection of personal essays, Pickering reflects on life — retirement, aging, gardening, and travel. In one essay, Pickering meditates on “cheerfulness,” and he hopes that his book “will make some readers smile… [and] marvel at ordinary life.” Pickering is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, and was the inspiration for the main character in Dead Poets Society. He is the author of 24 other books.