Reading is for ...............

For some reason or another, people like to leave notes in libraries. Perhaps the person who leaves the note hopes that someone who comes in afterwards will find the note and have their life magically transformed. It could happen. In the past, here at RPL, we have had patrons leave notes on a variety of subjects, some serious, others not so much. Here is one note that was recently left at a library in Arizona. A simple note really, but one can psychoanalyze it for days. Why the happy face? Did they misspell "losers" on purpose, just to be silly and/or ironic? Why the fancy upper case L? Does the subject really get them so agitated that they have to use an exclamation mark? Oh well, I am just happy that someone finally broke it to me that I am a looser.

What a sudden change in the weather we're experiencing in southern California! I fully expected the sun to burn holes in the pavement through early October.

I admit to being a summer girl at heart, and I remember feeling terribly depressed when the weather shifted from sprinklers and popsicles and frozen yogurt to this autumn chill, but I've learned to embrace the changes in the seasons in my adulthood. Besides, my birthday lands on the autumnal equinox, and some of my friends and loved ones have suggested that my seasonal loyalties are somewhat misplaced (yes, my b-day is tomorrow!).

Andrew, who grew up in Seattle, welcomes the change utterly, completely. "At last!" he said. "The cool air." Last night I heard him climbing the rickety staircase, his arms full of grocery bags no doubt (we're always running out of milk), but when he opened the door to our apartment, he just...stood there.

"What are you doing?" I said, following what seemed to me a significant pause.

"Oh, well, letting some of the cool air in..."

Despite my preference for the heat, how could I refuse him this pleasure, given the long sweltering (well, in his opinion!) summer he endured?



I continue to read food memoirs (My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme at the moment), but I'm also reading Xerxes Invades Greece -- excerpted from Herodotus's Histories. Penguin has taken to publishing excerpts of epics (with the exception of perhaps The Epic of Gilgamesh and Beowulf which are published in their entirety, I should think), and they're calling the series Penguin Epics. I'm enjoying the covers. The volume I'm reading addresses Xerxes's decision to invade Greece (as expressed in the title) and what befell him thereafter.

I am a sucker for special editions, special runs: the illustrated works of Dante, Spenser, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Herodotus, and so on and so forth. I discovered the Penguin Epics series at Book Soup in Hollywood, where we meandered following a brief stop at the Whisky a Go Go. Andrew and I go on some sort of outing almost every week. I mean to tell you that sometimes we get in the car and say, "Okay, what will it be? San Juan Capistrano or Santa Monica?"

Decisions, lovely decisions.

Andrew, kitty, and I are taking a little time off. I'll be back late next week.

Hitchcock should make a new film

I saw Hitchcock's "The Birds" when I was but a lad, and I knew those flying creatures were up to something. Well, it appears they are actually from the dark side and they banded together to close down a library. That's right, they denied people the right to read a book. It happened in Scotland no less, but I saw Mel in "Braveheart" so I'm sure they'll get it open again in no time.