Happy New Year!

It’s cold in Boise but the sun is shining bright at the moment. I started the year by breaking a resolution before I got out of bed. I slept till 8:00 on the dot. But I had gone to sleep at 2:00 a. m., so that’s only six hours of sleep. That’s good; it’s often four hours. The noise on Times Square was too much for me—I’d rather be reading—and I turned off the telly and got back to George.

I finished reading George Bush’s Decision Points around 10:00. In the next to the last chapter, the one on peace and its negotiations, is an amazing little story about a hen turkey that we should all appreciate, for that fowl helped to shape world peace. Don’t miss it.

Decision Points is an excellent work. It tells the other side of some stories, something the news people at the time didn’t tell us straight, if at all. A news man now told us the other day that George Bush’s book sold a million copies within about a month after publication. Then he said Bill Clinton’s book sold 1.2 million, but it took six years.

For 2010 my reading record shows only 40 books finished. Naturally, one of my resolutions for 2011 is to read 50. When I was teaching, I managed to read 100 books a year, but every time my classes and I read Hamlet, I counted every time as a reading, for it was a reading.

One thing I like to do (but failed to do this time) is to have a book almost finished by midnight of New Year’s Eve, and then finish it quickly on January 1. That gives one’s reading list a great start. There’s more to say, but this is enough for this posting. Do note this date may have more than one.

♥