Give us this day our daily news

Does anyone read USA Today outside of their hotel room, while traveling?

Headline from this morning: “I am not going to come in second” says president Bush. Fearless confidence.

Does anyone read the New Haven Register outside of a handful of New Havenites?

Headline from this morning: “Surprise, Surprise.” This is not a reference to anything of a political nature but to Davenport and Capriati upsets this week in a women’s tennis tournament that is taking place in New Haven at the moment. There has been some famous-player-spotting in the elevator of my hotel, but I am oblivious to it all having absolutely no genetic material that would predispose me toward having the ability to match faces in real life with those seen in media sources. If some such ability had been required as part of the SAT/GRE/LSAT testing process I would have never made it into academia, even at the level of “student.”

Does anyone read buried stories in the NYT that speak lavishly and exuberantly about Gore Vidal and Ravello?

Probably not. But they should. In the article, we read that Gore Vidal is selling his house in Ravello because his infirmities do not permit him easy access to the main piazza, where people congregate daily. I would agree that it is impossible to omit this from your Ravello routines and I, too, would sell rather than be reminded on a daily basis that this great joy is no longer available to me.

What is also interesting in the article is Vidal’s reference to his own book collection. He claims that books require him to purchase elaborate, expansive homes – otherwise he’d live in a one-bedroom flat. At last count, he had some 8,000 books.

I have never counted the books that are in my house (back in Madison) and so I do not know if 8,000 is a huge and excessive amount or just a moderately large collection. Do others count their books? Do you? I would imagine throwing around such (potentially) large numbers during dinner conversation would buy some status, but is this reason enough to engage in the act of counting? Do you start on the day you move to your very first pad and then simply add to the tally each time you make a new purchase? Or, at some point, when you’ve observed to yourself “wow, I have a lot of books,” do you hire a counter? Or maybe this is a goal that you set early in life. In your youth, you say to yourself “I will some day have two children, a steady income and 8,000 books. And I will never come in second!”

I belong to those that have thrown away moldy books and given away titles that I will never ever open again in my life. But now I’m having regrets. I feel like I’ve thrown away bragging rights to what could have been a significant topic of conversation during otherwise slow-moving dinner conversations. Ah well, at some point someone is bound to then ask --"and how many of those have you actually read, cover to cover?" Best not to get into that.