For the last month or so, I have been spending every weekday morning and afternoon on the drive to and from work listening to an excellent unabridged reading of Charles Dicken’s DAVID COPPERFIELD.  Though I am not quite done with it yet, I can safely say it’s one the best books I’ve ever read, and even better than GREAT EXPECTATIONS.  Here is a short list of reasons why it’s so good:

1. CHARACTERS - This is said to be true of every Dickens book, but there are so many indelible characters in DAVID COPPERFIELD they could — well–they could fill a book!  There is David’s Aunt, who hates donkeys on her property, and Mr. Macawber, who is always in debt, and, worst of all, the agonizingly insincere, toadying, plotting, treacherous Uriah Heap.  There is a woman dwarf who makes an appearance that seems like a walk on, only to re-appear with an awesome, heart-rending speech about her position in life.  Every character is memorable and fully realized, and seem familiar to me today in 2008 as they were when the book was written in 1850.
2. PLOT  - Unlike GREAT EXPECTATIONS, which had a good plot and was full of observations on the past, COPPERFIELD has tons of plot twists and turns, challenges for our hero, surprises, and sad moments.  It really keeps you on your toes.  And it all feels “real” and not just heaped on there for the sake of keeping you reading.  No wonder it’s been made into a movie several times.
3. HUMOR - This is a very funny book, a laugh out loud funny book, with great funny stories, and clever bits of business, and it never detracts from the story.  Dickens was a funny guy!
4. HEART - DAVID COPPERFIELD is a story about love, and family, and committment, and mistakes, and serious lessons about life.  Parts of this book will bring you to tears.  The speeches are excellent and very natural and very true.

I recommend this book to everyone, and can’t wait until my daughter starts reading it in Middle School so we can can read it together.  It is really something special.  Let’s face–I’m hooked.

Spoon size shredded wheat is nice, especially w/ bananas and a dollop of cream and a sprinkling of sugar, but for real comfort food, I prefer the “full-size” shredded wheat the way I had it when I was a kid:  Take out two pieces in a bowl, pour boiling water over to soften (but still leave some crisp parts!), pour off the water, add some butter, a small amount of milk, and sprinkle with sugar.  Dee-lish, and perfect “comfort food” if you’re into that.  Also helps with digestion, if you catch my drift, though trust me that is not an issue.  As Dr. Steve Brule says - Check it out!

1. I get my hair cut every three weeks, and look forward to getting it cut.
2. Whiel I’m at the barbershop waiting, it’s me and a teenage kid.  The teenage kid immediately makes a bee-line for the DETAILS magazine featuring a pictorial of the ultra-attractive Megan Fox.  I immediately make a bee-line for the TIME magazine with the Alec Baldwin interview.
3. When I read about the latest next-big-thing in music/movies/books/video game technology, I no longer think ‘How cool!”, but sigh knowingly at the latest iteration of removing a consumer from their hard earned dollar.
4. I become visibly excited when my Sprinkler guy describes an automatic rain sensor for my sprinkler system–and it’s wireless!
5. I surf the web to check my e-mail, run across my ten hundred millionth naked coed spam, and think to myself “Hey–where’s my wife?”

BONUS OLDNESS INDICATOR

I tell my kids to “Turn down that darn TV!–Daddy’s trying to read the New York Times book review of the new Alec Baldwin book.”

One of my favorite foods is Polish Kielbasa.   It is especially tasty when split open and grilled, then dropped in a hot dog roll with hot mustard.  It is even tastier with some sauteed mushrooms, onions and peppers.  Heavens to betsy it is tasty.  Perhaps not particularly good for your health, but as long as you don’t eat them, say, every week, you should be OK.  If you live in or around Dearborn, Michigan, I woudl highly recommend Dearborn Sausage Kielbasa.  Yum!

My wife had a Birthday.  I had a Birthday.  Cooper turned 4 and we had a pony and petting zoo.  Enough with the birthdays!  This is costing us a fortune!  Give us a break!  I get it–I am old.  Everyone I know is getting older.  The little ones get cute, and my wife gets MILF-ier.  But me, I just continue to decay.  But what’s the alternative?  As Loudon Wainwright III says: “Life’s a job you’re fired from, unless, of course, you quit.”  And I’m not quitting any time soon, thanks!

More cute kid pix by clicking on the Transformer.

Yesterday I finished a three week experience listening to the unabridged audiobook of Charles Dicken’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS in my car. You’d think being an English major I would have read this in Great Books or something, but I either slept in that day or kept my eyes down during the lecture so I wouldn’t be called on, so up to this point I had never in my life read any Dickens.  Oh sure, I’d read and heard about Dickens - long stories, memorable characters, plot twists, sentimental, etc., I’d read books by authors who are considered Dickensian (John Irving comes to mind), seen TV shows like LOST where a character’s favorite writer was Dickens, but the actual books I kind of avoided, binning them to an “eat your vegetables” group of Great Books authors like Proust, Joyce, James, etc.

Well my friends, I am here to tell you that this was one excellent book!  It was totally readable, totally accessible, totally interesting and so engrossing I sometimes wished for traffic jams so I could listen some more.  Besides being a great story (about Pipp, a country boy who “comes into property” from a mysterious benefactor), it was so full of life and humor and sadness and the whole gamut of human experience, one hardly knows how to begin to talk about it!  Suffice to say it’s now on my list of one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I am looking forward to reading my next Dickens novel quite soon, preferably less than 20 years after school.   So please, don’t be like I was, don’t put off an awesome reading experience because it reminds you of boring High school English classes with someone blowing spitballs at your back.  Read this book today!

Our daughter has turned 10.  She got a pink guitar, and has already learned two chords, and written about a dozen songs based on these two chords.  How did this all happen, and how did it hapen so fast?

We had our annual family trip to the Addison Oaks County Park, and it was fun, if by “fun” you mean “eventful” and if by “eventful” you mean that my poor 8-year old niece fell off a bike and scraped her face and broke her arm, and her Dad got posion ivy, and her girlfriend coldn’t sleep all night with bad allergies, and I broke my toe running away from a racoon.  Yes, I think “eventful” pretty much describes it.  There are more terrifying pictures here.