To say that I love to read would be a complete understatement. I am obsessed with reading. There is just something about escaping into other people's writing... Obviously, you guys get it, because you like to read blogs. (Thanks again!)
I pretty much enjoy everything that I read in one way or another. To me, reading is like eating--all foods have their place. Sometimes I desire a cheap-o, preservative-laden, orange cheese-y Cheetos puff with the same voracity that I might crave a perfectly marbled, finely prepared fillet mignon. Don't scoff! You know you like Cheetos, too!!
Anyway~I recently saw a random book lying on my mom's bedspread. I had no idea where it came from, whose it was (except that it sure wasn't mine)... It's topic--presidential assassination--wasn't even of initial interest to me, or seemingly anyone in our household. Buuuut, it did have pages...with words written on them, and so I picked it up and begin to read it. Finders keepers, losers weepers.
This book is "[p]art history lesson, part hilarious travelogue," according to one reviewer, Elissa Schappell of Vanity Fair. The author is obsessed with dead presidents and basically goes on pilgrimages to visit the locations of various presidential assassinations and subsequent memorials. Sounds hysterical, right? But, it so is!! She discusses the friends and family members that she ropes into these journeys and the people that she meets along the way, and her sense of humor is just perfect. Her enthusiasm for the subject, and especially the witty, pithy way that she describes both historical information and the details of her trips makes this book so, so funny.
Sarah Vowell, as a writer, is such an inspiration to me. Her passion for the subject on which she writes is not unlike mine here on this little bloggy. I can only hope to make you laugh the way she made me laugh...and to think of things in a new light as this book made me do. Presentation really is everything: If you can entertain as you instruct or inform or impart, you really have done a great service to others.
I'm so glad that I found that book! I still wonder how it got there...? Such an inspiring little nugget of good writing, right when I needed it... Very mysterious indeed.
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