Ah, books! Such wonderful capsules of words on paper, such wealth when we find one we can't put down, or one that engages or challenges us to think, to learn. And we learn in so many ways if along the way we learn to be critical readers.

I used to have more time to read more than I do now, and now I tend towards unabridged audio books. I have stacks of books waiting to be read and I hope I'll make it to them one day. I also have books because they are resources and I was able to get them at a good price (every so often Half-Price Books puts their excess Norton and Heath, etc., anthologies on sale for a buck or two a piece). I've put copies of those in each kids' room. More times than I can say my daughter (now a high school senior) has come asking me if we can find a particular book or essay and more often than not we've had it here. That is satisfactory for all of us. I can't and won't begin to duplicate the holdings of a library, but I have a core set of books that are very useful.

I believe that title above should be Foucault's Pendulum. I have some Foucault here, from a class I began in graduate school, the only one I ever had to drop (the now-ex decided to start disappearing on weekends and I couldn't manage child care and this much reading at the same time. At least he had the grace to show some chagrin when he realized I had to drop the class). I'd like to read more of it. As difficult as it is, I think he has some really good ideas in there.

I decided, many years ago, to read the novels of Thomas Hardy. My reasons weren't pure curiosity--more of a challenge from a friend's bragging about his girlfriend's reading--to see what all of the fuss was about. I quickly grew to love these novels, and am pleased to see that more of them have been published in the U.S. than were available at that time.

I did a master's degree in English and waded into a great number of books. It was a chance to wallow in stories and I loved having that opportunity. It was also a chance to read criticism and see what other people were getting out of these books. As a postmodernist, it didn't mean I needed to get the same meaning as they, and if I found what appeared to be flawed logic in criticism it made for a good paper because I had to back up my position with solid illustration of my own close readings and scholarship. All the while, continuing to read on the side and amazed at how ideas can form when you pass one book over another.

There may be book snobs around, but I don't know any of them. I know people who, as I do, slip the dust jacket off of a new hardcover before reading the book, then put it neatly in place afterward, because I have a growing collection of valuable first editions and perhaps this book will become one of those. I'm sitting looking at a copy of a first edition Sinclair Lewis It Can't Happen Here that I haven't read yet, but will, because I think this book's time has come again. Has anyone else read Babbitt? You should--it's funny and engaging and frustrating and a real eye-opener to how we live, still, in the U.S.

Steinbeck, Hemingway, Cather, there are so many solid American story tellers. And there are the essays. Baily White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind is a little-known (except among listeners of All Things Considered) is one that I've again pulled off of my shelf to reread. Linda Hasselstrom, a friend from years of attending literary conferences, has wonderful collections of women's essays. Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West is back on my bedside after a hiatus when I was reading other things.

I have boxes of books, novels and mysteries, I packed up at my Dad's house after he died, and I have shelves of books that he mailed to me after he finished reading them, because he thought I'd enjoy them. I've hesitated to take any of the boxed books to the used book place because I haven't had a chance to read them and I want to see what he was enjoying. He read fast, and he read every evening in his favorite chair in the corner of the living room over by the window. The next door neighbor finally decided something must be wrong when on a Tuesday evening he hadn't seen my Dad's light on since before the weekend. Dad often times went away for the weekend, but he was never away from his reading for that long. (Tom had been ill himself or he might have realized something was wrong sooner. He was still wheeling an IV around when I next saw him. We think Dad died a week earlier, based on phone and email records).

Dad was a retired reference librarian. He read all of the time. He collected music for 40 years. You can bet that some of the stuff he read fed into his knowledge of the songs he loved.

Not a bad way to spend your life, reading and singing, eh?