I can’t sleep, so I’ll tell you about what I’m reading, cause it’s really good. “No Ordinary Time, Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II” by Doris Kearns Goodwyn (winner of the Pulitzer Prize).
Okay, it’s very, very long, but it’s extremely well-written. I’m about 1/3 of the way through right now. It’s interesting to see how many of the things the US and the Roosevelts were dealing with have come up again in the times since.
Books on my to read list:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Last book I read:
“What Really Happened to the Class of ‘93: Start-Ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations Through an Untidy Decade” by Chris Colin.
This is actually a book about my high school class. I’m not in it, but my friend Stacy McMahon is quoted several times! The book is okay, it profiles 16 of my former classmates. I didn’t really know most of the people profiled, and didn’t know any of them really well. I guess the two I spent the most time with are Sean Bryant, who committed suicide, and Tim Yerrington, who sadly is now HIV positive. The most surprising was that Matt Farbman is a tranny now. He was in a group that often overlapped with mine. I just remember him being really weird. I wish them all well anyway.
I’m not sure if people who didn’t know these people will be interested in reading this book. Honestly, some of the profiles are really boring and sometimes Chris’ prose is not quite ready for prime time (example: “Charlotte should have become a first-class loner, a sullen glue sniffer if not another terrorizer of squirrels; through sheer dedication to education, no parent has ever worked harder to guarantee her daughter a miserable adolescence.”), but it’s worth a read if you’re interested in short bios of ordinary people.
Speaking of high school, I’m still very sad to hear that Mark Glaeser committed suicide, and I haven’t found anything out about it. He was a pretty good friend of mine. We didn’t keep in touch, but we were in band together (he played french horn and I played tenor sax) and we were lab partners for a year in Geoscience. I remember he was always cracking his neck. Once the two of us skipped school (I know, bad bad us) and drove in his Miata to Kings Dominion for a day of roller coaster riding, and we were always hanging out together during the awful band trips. He was such a nice, fun, intelligent guy. It’s too bad.
