Gravity, a Mountain, and Books

I've long thought some of history's landmark "discoveries" were a bit hyped-like Newton's revelation that apples fall. You would think even the most backward of his contemporaries, the ones that believed leeches fixed "what ails ya", and giant turtles held up the flat Earth, could deduce if you sat beneath an apple that became unattached to its tree it was going to hit you on the noggin.

So it is for me with reading. Since undertaking the personal challenge to stop watching O'Reilly, or Jim Cramer, or Billy Mays infomercials (that's the Oxy-Clean shouter. Does he always talk that way? "HEY, HONEY, WHERE'S MY CAR KEYS?" or "THIS IS GREAT COFFEE". If so, his whole family must use those squishy foam ear plugs you wear to shoot guns.) and read more, I've seen myself as on a lonely climb up a difficult mountainside, and soon I would breathe the rarefied air at the top. Well as I reached the summit, and peeked over the edge, I saw...lots of people who had been there all along. There was my wife, Lori, lying in bed with lots of pillows, the dog beside her, reading a book. There was my friend, Ty, on an open recliner, with Oreos lined up on his mid-section, reading a book. There was my Mom, on her couch, the View on her TV, reading a Danielle Steele novel. There was Pastor Brian Rice, pedaling a stationary bike, a book in each hand, reading them simultaneously, and pausing at regular intervals to do a few dumbbell curls. My journey of discovery had taken me to a place these folks and zillions of others knew about long ago.

So, the new dilemma has become 'what to read?' I go to Borders and stand there dumbfounded by the myriad choices, with little basis to choose other than cover photos and dust jacket blurbs, so I just get coffee. So I have come to rely on the recommendations of those whose opinions I value in other areas. Pastor Brian's blog (linked to the right) is a treasure trove of recommendations, but his posts are so cerebral, so esoteric, I have to open Dictionary.com on the other tab to understand them-and still often do not. Ty, whose reading list is nearly as lofty as Pastor Brian's, will translate it down to my sophomoric level (like rewriting a Pavarotti aurea so Kenny Rogers can sing it) and offer recommendations that fit. When there is a title both Ty and Pastor Brian recommend, that's a winner! Such was the case with Jesus for President-Ty listed it as a favorite on his blog (also linked), and Pastor Brian listed it in a church bulletin sermon notes insert. For me, that equals "must read". On a recent stay-at-home-'cause-I'm sick weekend, I finished a book Saturday midday, and facing at least 36 more hours of sequestration, desperately needed a new one. I hadn't changed out of my torn sweatpants shorts and stained T-shirt jammies, my breath smelled worse than our trash toter, and I had paper towel stuffed into my nose because it was running faster than I could blow it, so Borders was out of the question. Serendipity! Very near the chair I read in, in our bedroom, are two very tall, very wide mahogany colored shelves holding hundreds of colorful, vertically aligned rectangles that I was only subconsciously aware of until that moment. They were books! Lori, long a voluminous reader had accumulated a mini-Borders all around me, and a reliable source of reviews, framed by intimate knowledge of my narrow range of interest and limited depth, was laying on the bed behind me-reading! I began rooting through the titles to find something interesting, and she threw out a few titles I might like. I discovered, as well, that besides the hundreds she had read, there were a couple dozen she had bought for me, in the hope that someday, when I grew up, I too would become a reader!

All this has been a circuitous route to the real reason for this post-to recommend a book. It's one I got from Lori's List (similar to the Oprah Book Club, except there are 12 million fewer followers but the selections are personalized for me!) It's the 2006 book A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. O.K., I can hear the collective, "Duh, been there, read that..." Too bad. It's new to me. I'm about half way through it, and unless the second half suddenly takes a dull turn, it will rise to near the top of my comparatively short list of favorites. It is laugh-out-loud funny. In fact, I've had to stop reading more than once because my eyes were watered from laughing. It's about two middle aged, out of shape former college buddies (one of them more out of shape than the other) taking on the Appalachian Trail, all the way-from Georgia to Maine. One typical anecdote-early on, they meet another hiker, a solo female, a pudgy,very gullible, know-it-all, who is in no better condition than the guys. She lectures them endlessly about their inferior equipment, their slow pace, and their overweight physiques, pausing every few seconds to pinch the middle of her nose, make an intense snorting noise, and empty her "tubes" by shooting the contents onto the ground. The one fellow, Katz, tells her they both knew a guy who did that and one of his eyeballs popped out.
"Really?" "Oh, yeah." It rolled across the floor, and his dog ate it. Being a not financially well off family, they had to paint a ping pong ball like an eyeball and put that in. "Really?" There is the occasional expletive, but not many. I guess it would be PG-13. But if you like to laugh, have some respect for the wonders of wilderness (or are willing to develop some) this book is a good one!
jls