I Lost Track of the Score Long Ago

Congratulations to Ms. Amanda Pierce (a.k.a. "The Lady Friend", a.a.k.a. "The Soon to Be Permanent Lady Friend") for correctly naming "California" by Phantom Planet as the Tuesday Song of the Day.

I would also be remiss if I didn't direct all of you to this website, where you can drop a note for the future Mrs. Scott and yours truly.

Part 30 (My Response)

I've told you this before, so hopefully you won't still be too mad at me, but I've never read Atlas Shrugged. I've read other Rand books, but I've never tackled Atlas or The Fountainhead. I'll just borrow your copy of Atlas when you finish in 2011.

The lady friend has said that I over-think these kinds of questions (favorite book, movie, album, TV show, etc.), so I tried to find a nice middle ground between thinking too much and too little about it by taking my gut reactions, looking them over a little bit, and then deciding if they made sense.

In high school, I loved A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I'm not sure if you hippies in Boulder were required (or even allowed) to read a book loosely based on John Knowles' experiences at a bastion of northeast elitism like Exeter, but I loved the book, not only for its vivid depiction of someone else's high school experience, but also for how accurately it portrays the volatility of high school friendships and relationships.

In college, the one book that stands out is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. That's not to say that I didn't read a number of other books in college that I loved, but Heartbreaking Work was the first book that I remember reading and thinking, "I've never read anything like this before." It's also funny that I've recommended the book to other people and been surprised at how difficult they found the book to be.

In particular, I'm remember my Mom reading the book, and as we were discussing it she said something along the lines of "I guess you just have to be a guy in your late teens/early 20's to get that book." While I don't think that's universally true, I think there is something to the idea that sometimes we read books at these critical points in our lives, and if we had read that same book 10 years earlier or 10 years later, it would not have nearly the same affect on us. I don't think I would have connected with Eggers' description of how he tried to balance the loss of his parents, raising his 8-year old brother Toph, and at 22, trying to figure out who he was going to be, if I had read the book at 11 or at 31.