Roseyland

I heard a statistic that 80% of adults had not read a book in 2008. My first instinct was to stick my nose up at these people and spend some time thinking about how much better I am than them. I mean, the last book I read was The Golden Compass, and I read that in… um… November 2007. Hmmm… Surely I read something in 2008, how could I not? After thinking about it, I realized that I have not read a single book in 2008. Seriously. Feel free to stick your nose up at me now. But first, here are my excuses:

1. I read in spurts. In 2007, I read the last Harry Potter book, the Golden Compass, and something else. Surely I must have read something else. The point is, I had a spurt at the end of 2007, and my next spurt just didn’t hit in time for 2008.
2. I started my blog in 2008. This means that a lot of my reading time was spent reading blogs and writing my blog. I’m sure I read 3 or 4 books worth of blog entries.
3. I actually read a lot of Stephen Colbert’s, “I Am America (And So Can You!)” in 2008. But I didn’t read all of it, and what I did read was mostly in 2007.
4. The pile of books on my nightstand grew so large that I had performance anxiety. I was too scared to start reading for fear that I wouldn’t be able to finish.

I come from a family that loves to read. I picked up half of this. I love to buy books. The idea of reading them and gaining all that knowledge makes me ridiculously excited. Actually reading the books on the other hand, that just doesn’t happen for some reason. The books you read are supposed to say a lot about you. Well, I have a pile of books on my nightstand waiting to be read. They must say something about me too. You can see them in the picture above. Let me tell you about them from bottom to top.

1. Finding Amelia by Rick Gillespie - My mom got me this book for Christmas last year. I have read a few chapters in it, but not the whole thing from start to finish. I always assumed that Amelia Earhart just crashed into the ocean and was never heard from again, but the story is a lot more complicated than that. It appears that she crash landed on an island and survived. There were even short wave radio transmission heard from her after crash landing. It’s spooky and cool. This story investigates what really happened to her, and it’s fascinating. I should really read it sometime.
2. Meta Math! The Quest for Omega by Gregory Chaitin - I couldn’t wait for this book to come out when I first heard about it. In it, Chaitin tries to show that Math is based on randomness, and he talks about complexity, and information theory, which is all stuff that gets me silly excited. I have read the first few chapters of this book, and I want to finish it, but I’m a little put off by the author. He has a very high opinion of himself, and he likes to work in comments about making love to beautiful women into his book about… math. Yeah, um, I don’t know what to think about that.
3. Escape by Carolyn Jessop - I love the show Big Love on HBO. It’s about a polygamous family in Utah. Big Love led me to research polygamy in the United States, and I found out that there are a couple towns on the Utah/Arizona border made up almost entirely of polygamist. Polygamist control the local government, and it is almost like an independent little country. It’s like a whacked and corrupt amish community or something. Escape is the story of Carolyn Jessop’s escape from this community. I have read the first chapter, and it is very interesting. Someday I might read all of the chapters. You can read more about these communities here and here.
4. Wicked by Gregory Maguire - You have probably heard of this book. It is the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. I went to Chicago last April with my Mom, aunt, and cousin. You can read about our trip here. Anyways, I wanted to read Wicked before we saw it in Chicago. I started it, but I couldn’t finish it. As it turns out, you don’t really need to read the book to enjoy the play. In fact, the book is very deep, thick, and hard to read. I don’t recommend it. I have no intention of ever reading this book. I should probably remove it from the queue. The play is great though, go see the play.
5. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert - I love the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. This book is hillarious, and I have pretty much read the whole thing. I didn’t read it in sequential order though, so I don’t really know how much of it I have read. I’ve probably read it all, so I’m not really sure why it is still on my nightstand.
6. The Quantum and The Lotus by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan - This is the next book I want to read. I have owned this book for at least 7 years. It is about the intersection of science and Buddhism. I love the intersection of science and religion. This book deals with big questions, like what is consciousness, and why did the universe come into existence. I love these kinds of questions. I’m going to start reading this book tomorrow. For reals.
7. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman - The Golden Compass was the last book I really read from start to finish, and The Subtle Knife is the second book in the Golden Compass trilogy. I liked The Golden Compass so much, that I thought for sure I would read The Subtle Knife right away. Unfortunately, I finished The Golden Compass right before Thanksgiving, and then came Christmas, and then i forgot about it.
8. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama - This is the newest addition to my nightstand. I received this book as a Christmas present, which surprised me a little, because I thought that I did a better job of hiding my political beliefs. I guess not, because I received two Obama related Christmas presents this year. I actually had no idea that Obama wrote this book way back in 1995 before he was even a state senator. It feels good to have a president who is smart enough to write his own book, and one who did so because he actually wanted to write a book (as opposed to writing for political reasons). Anyways… I have read a few pages and it’s pretty good, I hope that I read the rest someday.

You are judging me aren’t you? You think that I procrastinate and fail to complete anything I start. Well, yeah, so? Is that such a bad thing? Don’t answer that. One book I have read is Freakonomics, which is a great book, you should read it. In Freakonomics, the author talks about how the IQ of children is highly correlated with the number of books in their home independent of how often they are read too. So just living with books seems to make you smarter. This is my plan, surround myself with good books, and learn by osmosis. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go watch TV