You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -- Ray Bradbury, U.S. science-fiction writer (1920-)
Reading is one of the pleasures in my life that I cannot let go of. No matter how busy everything else gets, I still find time to read, still need words and ideas and the time to explore others' ideas. Some of the books I've enjoyed:
- Guns, Crime and Freedom - Wayne LaPierre
- Guns and Violence - Joyce Malcom
- The Bias Against gun - John Lott
- More Guns, Less Crime - John Lott
- The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
- Anything by Carl Hiaassen or Isaac Asimov
- Almost any mystery, especially a decent procedural
- The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain
I wish to share some of that last with you. If you love, or are loved, and did not come to it as if it were a bolt of lightning, that old "love at first site" thing, you may come to enjoy this as much as I do. If, perhaps, you came to love unevenly, with one loving before the other knew, you will value this. It begins:
Monday
This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals. Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. ... Where did I get that word? ... I remember now— the new creature uses it.
Adam's story is one of exploration, frustration, surprise and, eventually, of love. Eve's is different. She loves first, knowing from the beginning that she is a part of him and always will be. Theirs is, as Twain is so capable of telling, the story of humans, their discovery of each other and of love, and their sharing of a life.
Early on, as my husband and I traveled down the eccentric path to finding each other, to coming to understand what love really could be to two people, I told him once that I felt as though I were a burden to him. That I had interrupted his life and that, much as Eve was to Adam, I was that "new creature with the long hair [who] is a good deal in the way."
He responded, "Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden."
Buy the book. Give it to someone you love. Buy another and give it to two people who love each other.
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