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I'm drawing a blog topic blank today. I'm feeling hot and kind of woozy and pretty tired, and it's crossed my mind that I may be coming down with something, but we won't go there.

On Sunday I'm going to a book club meeting with my dad. The book they're reading is "The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. I read it this past August. You know how the onset of Fall gets you into "school is about to start" mode, even though you've been out of school for who knows how long? Right after Labor day I'll find myself standing in the aisle of a big box store staring whistfully at the racks of empty notebooks, folders, and unsharpened pencils, dreaming about the endless possibilites a single blank page of lined paper holds. And then I snap out of it and thank god I'm all done with the whole education thing because lord knows, nothing sucks the wind out of a room like having to internalize the minutiae of history, math, science, and Wacky Wiffle Ball. Can you tell I was an English major? One thing I did love about school (despite the associated threat of September book reports or, even worse, oral presentations) were the summer reading lists we got on the last day of classes. Imagine my giddy excitement this past August when I happened to walk into Waldenbooks and saw one whole section devoted to local schools' summer reading lists. I was pretty impressed with their choices. They're reading some pretty heavy stuff. One of them happened to be "The Invisible Man". I wasn't reading anything at the time and the description intrigued me so I bought it. It was really good. I mentioned it to my dad and he mentioned it to the book club, and there you have it.

That was an unnecessarily long paragraph. Maybe I should go back and see if I can't get break it in twain. (Did you catch the use of the word twain just now? It's an english major thing.) Or maybe I just won't bother.

I don't love talking about books I've read because how I feel or what I think about them is generally something I have a hard time putting into words. Do you think loudly crunching on chips dipped in salsa counts as actually saying something? Probably not. I'd better go thumb through the book to refresh my memory.