On the plane, I read The Areas of My Expertise, which was funny, but not really meant to be read straight through. It’s more of a fictional version of Schott’s Miscellany. Which is to say, it’s a fictional reference book that one would never use as a reference anyway.
Because I got my brother a copy of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes book (see also Calvin and Hobbes: The Last Great Comic Strip), which took up more than half my suitcase with its 22-lb, three-volume majesty, I wasn’t able to bring anything else to read. Instead, last night, I rummaged through the nightstand in my parents’ spare bedroom.
They call it the insomnia room, because it’s where my mom sleeps in when my dad is snoring too loudly, and where my dad stays awake if he can’t sleep and wants to let my mom get some rest. So it’s got a neat little pile of soporific reading right next to the bed: one copy each of Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living, Cell, Science, PC Magazine, Architectural Digest, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, all at least six months old. The Architectural Digest is from some time in the last century.
There are also books on cancer and stress management and literary/economic theory, and a short novel about the sole remaining resident of a decrepit rural town in northern Spain. The nearby bookshelves are stuffed with overflow cookbooks, Spanish poetry, and obscure literary theory in roughly equal volume, plus a few children’s books that I think were bought for the now-grown offspring of various friends, but never actually wrapped and given.
I read the article on vintage swizzle sticks from last July’s Martha Stewart and it put me right to sleep.
Secretly Ironic 