Confessions of a Grandma

Our town library was not very busy on Monday when I was volunteering. It gave me a chance to scout out some books for myself. I came home with The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley for Mike. Any one who tracked my book borrowing and purchasing might conclude that I am really into history, particularly the military history of the United States and western expansion. They would be wrong, though. I brought home for myself Anne Tyler’s Noah’s Compass , Michael Pollan’s Food Rules and Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven . I’m usually more of a fiction reader, but I’ve enjoyed Michael Pollen’s other books and this one took about an hour to finish. I like that one of his rules is to enjoy yourself enough to occasionally break the rules. “All things in moderation…including moderation.” Jon Krakauer is an excellent writer, in my opinion, and Under the Banner of Heaven is about religious extremism. The focus is on the Mormons, but it really speaks to any kind of extreme fundamentalism. ...

I just read a novel, The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It's a stream of consciousness kind of narration by a poet who is supposed to be writing the introduction for an anthology of poems that rhyme. It's very funny. At the same time, it seems very revelatory of the thought processes of a poet and it was chock full of tidbits of literary information. I was fascinated...and it makes me want to read some more poetry. Then, I went to the UU church service this morning. The man who sat next to me said it was his second time in a UU church--last Sunday (about spirituality, which I missed) and then today which was themed, "Let the Good Times Roll," complete with New Orleans jazz and Mardi Gras costumes (no nudity or drinking though). He said he was a Lutheran by upbringing so I kept wondering what ever must have been swirling around in his mind as the masked and bejeweled choir danced down the aisles. There was no sermon--just the minister reading poems he had written whi...