~Upstream and Down~

In blogland there are memes-- fun, but a little like a chain email. Fun is relative, and I hesitate to impose it on others who experience fun differently. But this , from Josie , is easy, interesting, and-- for me, anyway-- fun! Rules: 
 1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more. 
 2. Open it to page 123. 
 3. Find the first 5 sentences and write them down. 
 4. Then invite 5 friends to do the same. I just finished reading Susan Wicklund's The Common Secret for a review to be published in The Internet Review of Books March 15. I was tempted to pull from that. But I've moved on to The Best American Nonrequired Reading , an eclectic collection of essays and other bits that "defy classification" as the promo says. Good stuff, all, and I'm enjoying it. Page 123 happens to be smack in the middle of a section where The Edge Foundation (www.edge.org) posed its 2006 question to scientists: What is your dangerous idea? Ray Kurzwell, inventor and technologist, expound...

I'm always impressed with bloggers who post a "Books I'm Reading" list. I'm impressed with their books, some of which I have never heard of, but they sound impressive. Just the titles alone impress me. If I had a list, it would be eclectic, with some embarassingly non-impressive sounding titles in among the impressive ones. There are some impressive books I read. I'm impressed anyway. I'd never list the Cosmopolitan Magazines I find beside my daughter's bed when I take a nap in her room, or the magazine slop I fall prey to in the supermarket checkout line; I don't call that reading. That's how I numb my mind to fall asleep, and learn-- yet again that there is no way at all to lose belly flab without diet and exercise, along with learning a few more things "men secretly desire." Along the lines of an embarrassing book to admit reading, I grabbed a copy of "It's All Too Much" off the "new release" shelf when...

My daughter was home this morning, a summer Saturday. "Aren't you going to the Cape?" I asked. She and her boyfriend spend weekends with his parents at their Cape Cod cottage. Usually she leaves after work on Friday, but not always. "I'm waiting for my Harry Potter book," she said. I should have known. Joanna's been an avid reader of the series since its inauguration ten years ago when she was 13. She'd preordered a copy of the new Harry Potter book from Amazon.com. Today was delivery day. She's a reader. The current book beside her bed is "Einstein" by Walter Isaacson. In between books like this, she's read the entire Potter series several times over. Her brother David was eight at Harry's debut, a third grader far more interested in sports than any book he'd met so far. When he settled down with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I thought a new era had begun; he'd discovered "reading for pleasure." N...