Hello Again

Until the advent of Facebook, I always assumed that once a friendship died there was no going back. At least not until the next reunion. Even with Facebook connections, I still carry that belief. What is "friendship," really?

I don't know ... Whatever ... Anyway ...

This weekend I swallowed my pride and took the initiative to rekindle the long dormant embers of a friendship that has been cold for too long. And as luck would have it, the library system welcomed me back with open arms, provided I show proof of residence.

After a mere 30 minutes of taking in that book-y smell and perusing the shelves and shelves of available fiction, I proudly exited the library with my head held high, two books nestled in my arm and a brand new library card attached to my key chain. What'll they think of next?

Apparently pride is quickly regurgitated.

Why did I take this long overdue step? It's essentially because I'm a gigantic nerd (not that only nerds own library cards, and not that there's anything wrong with being a nerd) and I spent several hours one night last week researching and compiling a spring/summer reading list for myself.

For some reason, I've been missing that piece of paper we used get at the end of the school year that had very intelligent-sounding literary suggestions. And then there were the various syllabi that literature majors are handed from term to term with even more intelligent-sounding explorations. And then there's my obsession with lists and words. And, as Debi can attest, lists of words.

So, now I have a list and a goal and a resource and all is right with the world.

Interested in comparing your nerdiness to mine? Here ya go:

• The Things They Carried (O'Brien)
• A Lesson Before Dying (Gaines)
• Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
• Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row (J. Masters)
• The Diary of Sam Pepys (Pepys)
• Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys)
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens)
• Love in the Time of Cholera (Garcia-Marquez)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez)
• Einstein's Dreams (Lightman)
• Winnie the Pooh (Milne)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bryson)
• The Gone-away World (Harkaway)
• Narrow Dog to Indian River (Darlington)
• A Far Cry from Kensington (Spark)
• The Four Corners of the Sky (Malone)
• The School of Essential Ingredients (Bauermeister)
• Dune (Herbert)
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Larsen)
• The Servants' Quarters (Freed)
• Road Dogs (Leonard)
• Woodsburner (Pipkin, Talese)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers)
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Roach)
• Pirate Latitudes (Crichton)
• The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)