Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

I love Anne Fadiman. Her two equally engrossing and completely different books, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down are books I had to own and will not give away or lend out. So I am keeping an eye out for the forthcoming collection of essays she edited, Rereadings: Seventeen writers revisit books they love.

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I was browsing around the library catalog in the Zs (Books (general). Writing. Paleography. Book industries and trade. Libraries. Bibliography.) and came across some interesting titles. They made me think of Simon, who was recently reading a birthday card someone had sent me. He had no trouble with the joke, printed as it was in capital letters. But then he squinted and frowned and said, "Mom, I can't read the fancy stuff." The "fancy stuff" would be the signature, in cursive. Remember before you could read or write cursive handwriting? I do. I
remember feeling like I had cracked the grown-up code of the ages when I could finally read cursive handwriting. But it's been so long since I couldn't that his confusion took me by surprise.

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Also in that section I ran across a couple books that reminded me of Simon Singh's The Code Book which I read on vacation one year. I don't do a whole lot of non-fiction but I enjoyed this book very much. And I felt so much smarter when I finished it : )

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In the Acknowledgements of The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell says, "Dorothy Dunnett may consider The Sparrow one long thank-you note for her splendid Lymond series." So of course I had to check out the Lymond series. The Game of Kings is the first, and I will read it sometime, but it is way too similar in setting to Outlander for me to want to tackle it now.

Also, in the Reader's Notes section, which I never look at normally because I think book group guides are smarmy and bogus, I read Russell's bio. Before venturing into fiction, Russell wrote "technical manuals for medical equipment like ... magnetic resonance scanners". Hey, guess what? So did I! Before I too got "fed up with academia and quit" to become...a librarian? Well, you certainly didn't think I was going to write an award-winning novel, did you? And she lives in Cleveland! Do you think if I asked her to lunch, she'd go? I'd *love* to meet her. She seems like such a cosmopolitan person.

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This is wicked cool.

Sarah Louise, forgive me. But even if they are a bit over the top, number four nails it. Bergdorf Blondes was *beyond* unreadable.