Leisurely Thoughts   from Howard

16 April 2002.   Okay, here are the books I bought to take along to Palm Springs:  Back When We Were Grown-ups, by Anne Tyler (like most John Irving fans, I love Anne Tyler) and, continuing my Brit kick, Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan.  Jerry is taking the new Grisham, The Summons, and Orange Crush, by Tim Dorsey.  And I'm bringing the laptop, in case I feel like writing.  This is going to be the year when I write again, you know  (Can you see it now?.. More Eek! Squashed Birds!: The Sequel?).

I am generally playing catch-up on my books-to-read list, or am in too much of a fog to know what books are out there at any given time, but you may have noticed that most of the books I read are from the 1990s (or am I just nostalgic for the Clinton years?).  So I hesitate to add yet another 90s novel to my "currently recommending" list, but, wow, High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby (another British author) (1995) is such a great book.  If you are a guy, age 30-55, you will find something to relate to in this story for that part of us that won't grow up -- the part of us that is still consumed with listing our Top 5 Records of All-Time.   Maybe you've seen the movie; I haven't yet but will rent it one of these days -- if you haven't, read the book first!

Isn't the Internet amazing?.. As I am sitting here at this computer in Minneapolis, I'm listening to a great R & B oldies station in London (Martha & the Vandellas, anyone?).

So, anyway, we fly off tomorrow morning to the awe-inspiring desert of southern California.  The next time you hear from me, I may be grotesquely sunburned.

palm springs, california

15 April 2002.    Spring has finally sprung in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and not a moment too soon, as my busy work season crashes to a halt and it's back to a 40-hour work week.  A busy season that ends on April 15th? -- hmmm, bet you can't figure out what my profession is.  Before getting back to the 40-hour week, though, Jerry and I are taking off on Wednesday for Palm Springs, California, for a few days of mental recuperation and baking in the sun after a long Minnesota winter.  If ever there was a place for allowing yourself to be brain-dead, Palm Springs by the pool is it.  Tonight I'll head for the book store to find something to take along.

12 April 2002.   Being one of those people who doesn't for a minute believe that president bush has a 75 % approval rating, I find it refreshing that Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (the Roger & Me guy) is at this moment the # 1 non-fiction best-seller in the US.  It is a well-researched trashing of the current administration and its corporate sponsors and is funny and maddening (especially the chapters on the stealing of the 2000 election) at the same time.  I think everybody should read it.  If you need to borrow my copy, let me know.

This book was written prior to 11 September and was originally scheduled to be released at about that time.  The release was postponed to February, and I commend the publisher, HarperCollins, for not forcing the author to tone down the bush-bashing (see www.michaelmoore.com).  Speech already is not as free as it was a few months ago.  And, since this isn't a political site, that's all I'll say for now. :-)

This past week, Oprah Winfrey announced the end of the Oprah Book Club, and, even though I have never knowingly read a selection of the Oprah Book Club, I find that news kind of sad.  Apparently, the Jonathan Franzen snub (see 04 November 2001) was the last straw for Oprah.  I'm hoping, though, that all those new readers that Oprah inspired will keep going to the bookstores anyway and maybe even find some books on their own.  There are worse habits.

31 March 2002.    I recently finished a novel called Gridlock by Ben Elton, a British TV comedian-turned-novelist, and I found it to be a wonderfully entertaining and funny book with many twists of truth, especially for the anti-corporate mood that I'm in these days.  And I probably never would have heard of Gridlock or Ben Elton if it hadn't been for the recommendation of one of our loyal Fourth Hand Discussion Group participants, Steve in Australia.  And now Jerry has read Gridlock and is recommending it to other people. And "German Mama" has bought Gridlock and is going to read it when she goes sailing to Norway.  And I wonder if there might be some silent viewers of this site that might also be reading it or some other book mentioned here that they might otherwise might not have read.  If so, then I will always consider this Web site to be a success.

Still Life with Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins, is another book that I read only because it was recommended in the early Discussion Group postings, and it too has created a mini-domino effect of new Tom Robbins readers.  And I know that John Irving books are being read that wouldn't have been read without the enthusiasm of this site's Irving visitors. 

Reading a book is generally a solitary experience, and I know not everybody feels comfortable sharing personal thoughts about a book with "the whole world" in a message board posting, and some of those people send me their feedback in e-mail form.  Either way, I love the input from people that I have never met but who feel that we might have a book, an author, an interest in common. Don't be shy:  maybe you can start a whole new domino effect. 

23 March 2002.   Every year, my sister Joan comes over, and we watch the Academy Awards on TV together, while eating potato chips and drinking Pepsi and making sarcastic remarks.  Let's face it: they don't make movies like they used to (Where have I heard that before?).  We usually try, though, to see as many of the nominated films as we can beforehand so that we can at least be informed in our amateur criticism.

The movie that I pick as the best of the five nominated films for Best Picture never wins:  my endorsement of a movie is generally the Kiss of Death.  I still haven't figured out how The Graduate wasn't named the Best Picture of 1967 or Moonstruck in 1987 or Fargo in 1996.    But even though I know that Hollywood and I are not exactly in sync, we'll still sit there for the three or four hours it takes to announce these trumped-up awards and end up being furious.

This year may have been the dreariest movie year of my lifetime, and I had to force myself to see the sorry lot of Best Picture nominees.  It's not that these are bad movies; in fact, they are all above average by far.  It's just that there should be five movies better than these.  The nominees this year are A Beautiful Mind, Moulin Rouge!, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.  Now, to be fair, I have to admit that I have only seen parts of Moulin Rouge! and may still see the whole movie before tomorrow night's Awards.  But my pick for Best Picture of these choices is -- ta-dah! -- In the Bedroom, an excellent, moving, beautifully-filmed and -acted picture.  Plus, I would select Sissy Spacek for Best Actress, Tom Wilkinson for Best Actor, and Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress, all from In the Bedroom.  Beyond that, I would choose Robert Altman for Best Director for Gosford Park, a thoroughly enjoyable movie, and Ian McKellen for Best Supporting Actor for Lord of the Rings (mostly just because I like him).  So you can pretty well bet that none of the above will win.

[ P.S.  A later note:  All of my picks lost, of course.  The highlight of the program:  Woody Allen's surprise appearance.]

15 March 2002 (The Ides of March).   Ralf says that it is spring in Luxembourg and time for motorcycle riding.  The weather here in Minnesota is still very Doctor Zhivago-like (lots of snow, no motorcycles), and Olli and Jack in Finland are making it sound at least that bad where they are.  But, guess what -- spring arrives, in name at least, in just five days.

My busy work time is still here for another month, then Jerry and I are off to recuperate for a few days by a pool under the hot desert sun of Palm Springs, California; until then, very little leisure time, hence not enough leisurely thoughts.  I have been enjoying Gridlock by Ben Elton, a book recommended by Steve in Australia, and I'll tell you about it when I'm finished, which will be soon.  I finally finished Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow a couple weeks ago, and it was okay, but I still haven't figured out how it was the 21st best novel of the 20th Century (see 10 January) (of course, the people who named Henderson #21 were the same people who named Ulysses #1 -- my Ulysses tirade is still coming).

For those fans out there of my sister Joan (and her cat Ornery), an update:  she has a job change coming next month and is stressed about that -- This while she is reading more Jack Kerouac.  So she could still end up On the Road.  She just finished reading, and is recommending, a bestselling book named Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser, which is sort of an indictment of the fast food industry.  Joan has now given up fast food and may never do McDonald's again, which might turn out to be a disadvantage if she ever really is on the road.   Also, Joan is seeing as many of the nominated movies as she can before next week's Academy Awards; I think she and I are going to see Gosford Park sometime over the weekend.

My older son Jon turns 28 on the 20th (the first day of spring) and is doing well, although there is some rumor that he might want to move to Montana (and Jon is very un-cowboy-like).  Tom, my 20-year-old son, commented the other day that he hasn't had a mention here recently, so here is his mention:  Hi, Tom.  Tom for some reason has developed an interest lately in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  And he's learning German.

Jerry, who has stress of his own, decided a couple days ago to take the day off and do nothing.  So while the snow was falling outside, he just stayed in bed all day and read a Danielle Steel book.  How wonderful does that sound?

04 March 2002.   Even though I try not to be, because it is less fun than it once was, I tend to be a political person, and, when I sit at this keyboard, sometimes it's hard not to start ranting about the corporate-owned Bush administration and other outrages of the 2002 world.  But I do restrain myself, as you see -- it's not a political site.  I do want to say something, though, about my one political hero, US Senator Paul Wellstone.  (Trivia question:  what does Paul Wellstone have in common with this website's reason-for-being, John Irving?  The answer in a moment).

Jerry and I next weekend are hosting in our home a reception/fundraiser for Senator Wellstone and will have the honor of having Paul and his wife Sheila in attendance.  He is in a very tough re-election campaign in November, and we plan on being very active in his campaign.  The Bush administration and corporate America have targeted Wellstone for defeat; in fact, President Bush is here in Minnesota tonight at a fundraiser for Senator Wellstone's opponent, apparently feeling strongly that he needs yet another Yes Man in the US Senate.  Campaigns have become all about big money, are nasty and negative and distorted, never about real issues -- hence, the lack of fun in politics anymore.  But we still need to do what we can do, or it's like giving up.

The trivia answer:  It's possible that Paul Wellstone and John Irving may have a lot in common; for instance, they are both published by Random House (and I highly recommend Senator Wellstone's book that came out last summer, The Conscience of a Liberal).  But the answer that I was looking for is that they have both been inductees as Outstanding Americans in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, John Irving in 1992 (click for link), Paul Wellstone in 2001(click for link).  What's ironic here in Minnesota is that our scrappy, liberal Senator is an honoree in the Wrestling Hall of Fame while at the same time  we have a tough-talking incredible hulk of a Governor, Jesse Ventura, a former pseudo (a/k/a "Professional") wrestler, whose large shadow will never darken the Hall of Fame's doors, I'm sure.

Hey, that was fun.  I'm thinking that if I ever do another website, it's got to be political. 

02 March 2002 (John Irving's birthday).   Jerry spent last weekend in Iceland.  I couldn't go along, of course, since these are the months when I'm working my fingers to the bone and can't get away.  It was his first time there, and he came back very enthusiastically wanting to go again, primarily because of the friendliness and warmth of the people of Iceland (Remember, though, that our last trip was to Barcelona -- not a hard act to follow for friendliness).  He also remarked on the number of bookstores there and the prevalence of books everywhere.  Someone told him that per capita, the people of Reykjavik, the capital and largest city in Iceland, read more books in English in a year than any other city in the world (Who does these surveys?). And English is only the second language there.

Whatever city reads the most books, I know it isn't any city here in the US, where people seem to read less every year and where too many people seem to be proud that they don't read books at all ("But I saw the movie!").  This was one reason why I was encouraged that the city of St. Paul was initiating a city-wide reading of a book together (see 05 February), not realizing when I was writing that that this was not exactly an original idea.  In the weeks since then, I have been reading about some other cities that have done the same thing or are planning on doing it.  Apparently, Seattle was the first major US city to try, followed by Chicago (where they read To Kill A Mockingbird) and some other cities and towns.

I have read a couple of funny columns in the New York Times on this topic relating to New York's attempt to do the same, in particular a column by David D. Kirkpatrick on 19 February called "Want a Fight?  Pick One Book for All New Yorkers", in which he describes the effort to pick a book with enough diversity, inoffensiveness, and substance to please everybody in a city where people don't often agree.  Another good column was "All of New York on the Same Page", by Verlyn Klinkenborg on 22 February.  The book chosen was Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee.  But not without a fight, and not without its vocal dissenters.

It will be interesting to see what eager-to-please St. Paul picks.  My entry, being in the Tim O'Brien frame-of-mind that I'm in, was In the Lake of the Woods, one of the few books of his that I have not read.  I'll let you know what they pick.

26 February 2002.    Don't get me started.  The Discussion Group page went down in flames a couple days ago, and Microsoft and my web server are still trying to figure out what happened to it (It's always the other one's fault, of course).  Life and web sites are fragile, especially for someone like me without a clear understanding of either one; let's hope we're back to stay.

I'd rather talk about Tim O'Brien, novelist extraordinaire.  If you have struggled through my "Me and Mr. Irving" page, you may remember that I was living in Tim's hometown (Worthington, Minnesota), circa 1978, when he won the National Book Award for Fiction, for Going After Cacciato.  Sometime in the year or so after winning that prestigious award, he made a triumphant return to Worthington and held a reading in the auditorium at the local community college.  I went to hear him, of course.  The audience was fairly sparse, but, in a town like Worthington, a returning triumphant novelist doesn't attract the crowd that a returning triumphant NASCAR racer or a returning triumphant country-western singer would undoubtedly command.   By this time, I had read all the books he had written to that point, like Cacciato, Northern Lights, and If I Die in a Combat Zone.  He read from his work-in-progress at the time, The Nuclear Age (published sometime in the 1980s).  Even though I was a bit peeved at him for beating out The World According to Garp for the Award, I was as impressed with him in person as I had been with his written words.  A good guy.

Tim O'Brien is primarily known for writing fiction and non-fiction drawn from his own experiences in the horrors of the Vietnam War.  A serious but acclaimed (and under-appreciated) body of work.  I hadn't read any of his books after I left Worthington (1984), but most of his works after then also dealt with Vietnam directly or indirectly and continued to be serious -- until the book, Tomcat in Love, released in 1998, which is the book I just finished reading.  This story is hilarious and contemporary -- and a wild and successful change of pace for Tim O'Brien (Keep in mind I'm a Garp-lover!).  It deals with relationships and the failure of relationships and revenge and, oh yes, a dab of Vietnam craziness.  His writing style is amazing, and this book is the best of anything that I have read by him.   I think I would compare Tim's skills in this book to the best novels of Philip Roth,  with a touch of Midwestern accent and shorter paragraphs!  If you are looking for a fun book to get you through the rest of the winter, I highly recommend Tomcat in Love.

16 February 2002.   On Wednesday night, our friend Julia took Jerry and Tom and me to the Timberwolves basketball game (T-wolves 107, Phoenix Suns 92).  Over dinner, before the game, I asked Julia what she is reading these days -- she's always reading something -- and she said she's reading Grisham's Painted House, which you may recall I just recently tossed aside after eighty pages (see 05 February).  She agrees that it takes a while to get into, but now she is liking it and says it's worth getting through the blandness.   Plus, Jerry read it a few months ago and said it's pretty good, and he thought I was too hasty in setting it aside.  One thing about Grisham books:  it's not hard to find people to talk about them with.  I remember a vacation I had in Palm Springs, California, a couple years ago.  There was one time there when literally every person around the swimming pool was reading either the latest Grisham in hardback or the latest Grisham in paperback (last year's hardback).  The nice thing about that is, if you happen to see somebody by the pool you might like to start a conversation with, you always have an opening line:  "So how do you like that new Grisham?", or maybe "So what's your favorite Grisham?" (mine: The Firm and The Chamber), or the most common one, "Do you think the Grisham books are going downhill?"

Anyway, being the open-minded person I am, I'll probably go back to A Painted House soon without waiting for the prison term.

Last night, we had dinner with two of Jerry's clients, Ward and Maggie, a very cool young couple I hadn't met before, and it turns out that Maggie is a John Irving reader, at least has read all the big Irvings.  She knew that Jerry and I are very into Amsterdam and was eager to tell me about A Widow for One Year, not knowing of course that I am a John Irving freak.  She has not read The Fourth Hand yet, though, and didn't know that part of the story centers around the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Maggie's hometown, the same as Otto and Doris Claussen!  So -- a fun dinner conversation, and I bet The Fourth Hand will be next on her list to read.  One odd thing, though:  she says she is only sort of a casual Packer fan.  I didn't know there was such a thing as a casual Green Bay Packer fan!

An update on the Ruthie/Jack Kerouac analogy (see 09 February):  If you have read Kerouac's On The Road (#55 on The List [see 10 January-- are you getting dizzy yet?], by the way, even though it's not very fictional), you might remember how the main thing these Beat Generation characters did was go back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast and when they get to one destination, all they could think about was turning around and going back and being on the other coast again.  So it was New York, San Francisco, New York, San Francisco, etc.  Being on speed helped.  Ruthie, despite not being on speed, has turned around and headed back from Los Angeles to the East Coast.  So the adventure only lasted about two weeks, but it's just the first of many adventures of this sort, I'm sure.  Hang in there, Ruthie.  Readers all over the world are watching!

09 February 2002.   My niece, Ruthie, who graduated from college a month or two ago, last week impulsively (?) picked up and moved from her (and my) home town in southern New Jersey to Los Angeles, California, and has found an apartment in Hollywood, of all places.  Her drive, 3000+ miles across the country, included every variety of crisis like an ice storm, a fender-bender, power outages when she was running on empty and looking for an open gas station.  If you knew Ruthie, you would expect nothing less.  She is the definition of a free spirit, with all its positives and negatives.

This Ruthie adventure has drawn the intense interest of my sister, Joan, the would-be Jack Kerouac of the family, who thinks it is the coolest thing in the world that somebody can just take off like that with no money in her pocket and see what happens.  A year or so ago, Joan was fantasizing about quitting her job and taking off across the country with no particular destination or timetable, sort of like Steinbeck in his Travels With Charley, except that she'd be driving a car instead of a pick-up and would be traveling with her cat named Ornery instead of a dog named Charley.  After pondering this wild scenario for a few days, she decided to buy a new coffee table instead (Which turned out to be defective).  But if this Ruthie thing works out, watch out for Joan.

Meanwhile, there Ruthie sits in Hollywood with no job and near-penniless and not exactly a people-person, with my brother and sister-in-law back in Jersey probably worried sick, and no story-to-come will surprise me.  If ever there was somebody made for LA, this is the kid.

05 February 2002.   Wow.  Somehow I won $400 on the SuperBowl Sunday night.  And there turned out to be a real game this year in addition to the usual, annoying corporate excess (But what were U2 thinking??).  Congratulations to the New England Patriots for winning SuperBowl XXXVI (Next year the Eagles!).

I need help with something.  As you may know, I've lived in Minneapolis for a couple of years now, but for most of the last 18 years I have lived in the other Twin City, St. Paul, the capital city of Minnesota.  St. Paul is a wonderful city, very livable, and I still have more ties over there on the other side of the Mississippi than here, like my business and various friends, and my sister Joan lives there, and both my sons live over there (They both graduated from St. Paul high schools).  Anyway, I see in the newspaper that the superintendent of the St. Paul Public Schools and the Mayor of St. Paul are proposing sort of a St. Paul Book Club, where a certain book is selected for a month and the city (whoever chooses to, of course) reads it all at the same time.

Which, I think, is kind of a cool idea.  But they are asking the public for nominations for a book to read the first month, young adult to adult, and I can't think what book to nominate.  The unfortunate thing is that they will most likely be picking on a regular basis something bland, inoffensive and oh so politically correct, so I don't suppose nominations for books like A Son of the Circus or Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates  would get too far.  And I would probably rather have the people of St. Paul reading something bland, inoffensive and politically correct than not reading at all and instead watching  "Survivor", holding up gas stations, or playing video games -- so I need some ideas.  Or you can go right to their Web site and nominate something yourself (www.saintpaulreads.org).  Thanks!

Speaking of bland, I tossed aside A Painted House the other day after about eighty pages and have moved on to Tomcat in Love by Minnesota's own Tim O'Brien, and so far it is excellent (But also un-nominatable).  So, my Grisham streak is on hold. I will probably finish Painted House one day when I have a lot of time to kill, like maybe an unexpected and extended prison sentence.

28 January 2002.   I read somewhere that more copies of John Irving books are sold in Germany than in the United States and Canada combined.  This is on my mind as the German translation of The Fourth Hand (Die Vierte Hand) is just about to hit the streets in Germany and Dr. Zajac's www.needahand.com may lead some more readers right here.  It would be a good time for me to know the German language, which unfortunately I don't.

Way back in school, I liked foreign language classes and took several years each of Latin, French, and Spanish.  The only language that our school offered that I did not take was German, and that was the one I should have taken, as it turned out, because I was stationed in Germany in the Army from 1968-1970 and would have found it most useful!  The Army took most of my time (I was sort of the Radar O'Reilly of our company), and I was a young disgruntled draftee that mostly was relieved that I had not been sent to Vietnam instead, and I did not pick up much of the German language while living there.

My post was in Wildflecken, which is a town and, at that time, training base in the Rhoen Mountains of northern Bavaria, northeast of Frankfurt and about fifteen kilometers from what used to be the East German border.  In 2000, thirty years after leaving, I returned to Wildflecken, along with Jerry and my two grown sons Jon and Tom, and was surprised that I had not remembered better how beautiful that part of Germany is.  That visit was another time when I wished I knew how to speak German.  Maybe it's finally time to start working on learning it.  Until then, I hope I can find some kind soul, maybe on the cold, stormy German North Sea, who will help me out if I need some translating assistance.

For the readers in Germany who make it this far into the website -- and also to those who don't  -- WILLKOMMEN! Hoffentlich gefaellt Ihnen Die Vierte Hand.

23 January 2002.   If you have ever seen the movie Fargo (a classic), you probably have a mental image of what Minnesota is like in winter.  Brutal!   This year -- knock on wood -- for some reason winter is remarkably mild (Global warming??).  We only have a week left in January, and so far we have only had one night when the temperature has dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit!  That's unheard-of here. 

    Even in the worst of winters, though, life here in the urban center of the Twin Cities is pretty manageable, not as severe as it can be out in the windswept prairies of out-state Minnesota or even out there in the suburbs.  Jerry and I live just several blocks from downtown Minneapolis, and my office is in downtown St. Paul, and our lives generally revolve around the two inner cities.  Making it easier to endure the winters is the fact that there is so much to do here (indoors, thankfully) -- sports teams (the basketball Minnesota Timberwolves and the hockey Minnesota Wild, for instance), a great local theater scene (such as the Guthrie and the Jungle Theaters in Minneapolis and the Park Square and the Penumbra Theaters in St. Paul), numerous other cultural events, the Mall of America (if that counts!), and plenty of clubs and pubs and good restaurants.  Having said all that, though, there is no place where spring is more welcome than here.

    This is my busy time at work, from January to April -- long hours, stress, all that -- so leisure time is more valued than ever.  I don't have nearly enough spare time for things like playing the piano or reading a book or going out, but that's just how life is sometimes and I bet it happens to you too.  We do have some tickets for some upcoming events in the next two or three weeks -- a couple of Timberwolves and Wild games, a Broadway touring production of Fiddler on the Roof with Theodore Bikel as Tevye.  Last week, we went to see the Broadway touring production of Swing! (quite good, by the way) at the beautiful Orpheum Theater in downtown Minneapolis.  Plus, there are some movies we need to see before the Academy Awards in March.

    I've been reading, slowly but surely, Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow (#21 on "The List" -- see 10 January) on my lunch breaks.  I have never made it all the way through a Saul Bellow book before, Herzog and Humboldt's Gift being my previous attempts some years ago, but have high hopes of getting through this one.  For my bedtime reading, I've started A Painted House by John Grisham, which hopefully won't tax my brain too much since by that time of night this time of year my brainpower is mostly depleted.

     If you're watching the NFL football playoffs this weekend -- Go, Eagles!

10 January 2002.   As is obvious, I am no Super Intellectual and am no book reviewer or anything remotely implying literary authority.  When I mention a book I am reading or recommending, it should be taken as a comment would be taken if you and I were just having a cup of coffee together -- and maybe we're splitting a chocolate croissant -- and right before I tell you how much I like, say,  the Pet Shop Boys or Philly cheesesteaks.  But I do try to stretch my brain when I can and read something that, for instance, might help me if I were ever a Jeopardy! contestant!

    In 2000, did you happen to see the list of the "100 Best (English Language) Novels of the 20th Century"?  The List was voted on by the Board of the Modern Library (whoever that is), plus there was also a "Reader's List".  In case you didn't see the lists, here's a link -- 100 Best Novels.  Now, the credibility of the Board's List is immediately suspect, because (1) Ulysses is #1 (I'll go on a Ulysses tirade one of these days) and (2) there are NO John Irving novels on the list at all.  John Irving does make the Reader's List, but that list is pretty silly, I'd ignore it if I were you.  Despite these misgivings about the legitimacy of the list at all, I do find it interesting and have found myself the last couple years reading some of the Top 100, I call it my Books I Should Have Read in College and Didn't List (And I even used to be an English major back in my Eek! Squashed Birds! days).

    All of this lengthy introduction leads only to my telling you that the other book I read on the Spain trip last week turns out to be on The List.  A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh is #34 on the list and coincidentally released in '34.  Evelyn Waugh was an English novelist, 1903-1966,  probably is best known for Brideshead Revisited (#80 on the list).  Very funny book, savage at times.  And I didn't read it because it was on The List.  I read it because it was recommended by my friend Tim in Fort Lauderdale -- Thanks, Tim.

    (At least Kurt Vonnegut made The List -- Slaughterhouse-Five is #18!).  And now how about a coffee refill?

06 January 2002.   The rain in Spain this past week did not stay mainly in the plain.  It seemed to be everywhere, at least on the Spanish Mediterranean coast where we were, Barcelona and Benidorm and everywhere in between.  It turned out to be a week of more reading and less sightseeing than we would have guessed.  I read two books during the week, amazing for a slow reader like myself.

    Actually, as I write this, I just finished the second of the two a few minutes ago here a couple hours out of Amsterdam over the Atlantic and six hours or so before we touch down back in Minneapolis  -- Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins.  Wow, what a book!  It's just my second Tom Robbins, Woodpecker being the other, and I loved this one.  What a wild use of words, hilarious similes and metaphors that stretch the limits of the contemporary American version of the English language like bubble gum laced with LSD.  (Two things I wonder are, first of all, whether Tom Robbins novels are translated into other languages -- if they are, then I salute the heroic translators -- and the second is, will anybody still be reading and understanding Tom Robbins in 100 years?).  Fierce Invalids is about cursed, philosophical CIA agents, computer-hacker grandmothers, and lovable ex-communicated nuns and takes us to the Peruvian jungle, the Syrian desert, Bangkok, Vatican City, and, of course, Seattle.  And that's enough gushing by me for now, I'll get over it.

    By the way, a couple of additions to my "Best Book I read in 2001" list (see 27 December):

    -    My brother, Ron, in New Jersey:  John Adams, by David McCullough.

    -    My brother Davy in San Antonio (and China):  Soul Mountain, by Gao Xing Jian (but Davy adds that he would probably have picked John Adams also but hadn't quite finished it).

    -    My brother-in-law Dave in the Philippines:  Tolkien:  Man and Myth, by Joseph Pearce.

    Might you be wondering how I liked Barcelona?  My instant analysis:  Barcelona:  interesting architecture, very good subway system, grim people.  Or maybe I'd rather think that it was just a week when everybody was in a bad mood and that maybe they aren't always like that.  But, I must say,  it was cool to be in Europe for the debut of the euro.  Cheers!

    And, dear sister Joan, I hope you had a very good birthday today.  :-)

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