Bedtime Reading

I finished The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man last night. On my wish list for 2009: to find a community of people who like to read books and talk about them. Ideally, a local group of ten or fewer people with something more substantial than "I really liked this book" to offer in the way of discussion.

Perhaps the guy who loaned me the book will be open to some chat over coffee. But I won't get my hopes up.







My sleep cycle is "off" again so when I finished the book at 2 a.m., I wasn't ready yet for sleep. I store my stack of The Sun by the bed so I grabbed the December issue. The last words I read on the first day of the new year were these, from the Sunbeams section:

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people. -Tom Masson


Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. -Barbara Kingsolver



The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. -I.F. Stone



I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish. -Dame Edith Sitwell




When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him. -Jonathan Swift


The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. -Lorraine Hansberry