When was the last time you stayed up all night reading a book?

Last night Hubby was gone for an overnight work retreat. There was nothing on TV, so rather than watch just any old thing, I went up to the master bedroom, did a couple loads of laundry, and read Lisey's Story, finally! I had ordered it when it came out, but I hadn't read more than a page or two. Last night I read all 500+ pages start to finish. It was one of those absorbing stories where I looked up at 10:36, then a little while later looked up again and realized it was close to midnight.

I started reading a little after 8:00 and finished around 1:20 a.m.

Yeah. It was good.

And I was sufficiently creeped out that it took me a while to get to sleep!

Good job, Big Steve.

The NY Times had an article today about a new book by Susan Jacoby, titled The Age of American Unreason.

...But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

This little anecdote, which explains why she felt moved to write this book, scares the crap out of me.

Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

I hate to keep bringing this back to political stuff, but I've noticed this anti-intellectual trend much more since Bush got into office. Does anyone remember when having your child attend an Ivy League college was the dream of every parent? And Bush and his cohorts made John Kerry's having attended Yale sound like an elitist bad thing. (Neatly sidestepping the fact that the president also went to Yale.) Now being "plain folks" is the ideal. But we also blame those "plain folks" for not understanding their sophisticated adjustable-rate mortgages and starting the whole subprime crisis. Seems to this mere holder of a bachelor's degree that our ignorance may be killing us.

Over at theferrett's journal, he's been talking about the Dale Carnegie book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which has been around in some form or another since 1937! Amazing, isn't it? I want to talk more about the book when I get through more of it, but this is something I discovered about myself.

Knowing that I have piles of books lying around the house that haven't even been cracked open once, I decided I would get the audiobook version and listen to it on my iPod going to and from work. I'm about 2 hours into it so far. I like it pretty well so far. But what I'm noticing is that I'm probably absorbing more listening to it. There are a lot of folksy anecdotes that I probably would have just glossed over if I'd been reading the book. The narrator reads much slower than I would read the print version. But I'm sort of a captive audience, so I'm hearing and processing more of it.

Also, I've been listening to it in the morning, so I'm coming into the office with all kinds of friendly Dale Carnegie type thoughts to start the day. I'm thanking the parking attendants, I'm greeting people with a smile and by name. I hope it's having a positive effect on the people I'm encountering, but it's sure having a positive effect on me.

I wonder if I was always an auditory learner, or this is something that's developed as I'm getting older? Anyway, it's kind of fascinating!

And the book so far has covered a lot of the basics: don't criticize people; be genuinely interested in them; smiling is important; learning and remembering names is very important. All the basic stuff we kind of already know, but often let slide. Also, being empathetic and trying to find what's in it for the other person is big. For example, this morning I got a list of securities from a client to update to make sure the securities were assigned to the client's firm. Half the list had already been checked. So yeah, it was a waste of time for me to find these and check to see if they'd been updated. But the team in charge of this doesn't care about my needs. So when I e-mailed the team leader, I couched it in how can we show the clients how to check for themselves, to save them time from having to go through and make up a list. There was nothing about my needs in it, just the other guy's. I need to think about that other ways I can do that. I spend a large part of my day calling other people to get information to answer client questions. Those other people don't care about what I want, so how can I interest them in helping me? I'll think about it more.

I own all of the Preacher trade paperbacks! They better not screw this up...

From UPI:

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The Home Box Office network is bringing the popular comic book series Preacher to the small screen, with a one-hour series from the creator of Daredevil.

The pilot for the new show, based on the Vertigo comics series from the 1990s, is being done by Mark Steven Johnson, who is also behind the upcoming Ghost Rider film, while Howard Deutch will direct, the Hollywood Reporter said Wednesday.

The comic book Preacher ran from 1995 to 2000 and told the story of a Texas preacher possessed by a supernatural entity called Genesis, which was conceived by the unnatural coupling of an angel and a demon. Preacher teams up with his new powers, an old girlfriend and a hard-drinking Irish vampire to set out on a journey across America to find God, who had apparently abandoned his duties in Heaven.

The series' creators, writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, will serve as co-executive producers.

The new project reunites Johnson and Deutch, who last worked together on Grumpier Old Men which Johnson wrote and Deutch directed.

ETA, at 5:30 pm EST: Wil Wheaton squees about this on his blog today too!

Via BoingBoing: this is a great flippin' idea. I will add more books later, but look for me, ehnotsomuch!