Aselin

No, the photo is not me, but it might as well be. This is a quote from one of my favorite books, Atlas Shrugged. I read a lot. It's a characteristic of my geekness that I heartily embrace. Encounters of great literature, the good turn of a phrase, a well developed character have been known to bring me to tears. I love pieces of lots of books, and feel like there are some whole books that should be requisite reading before one is let out into society.

My challenge is that due to my eclectic taste, few people agree with me. I just don't like the stuff other people read. I think I am the only person within the incorporated boundaries of my town that has not read the Twilight series. I didn't read "The Secret" and after one unfortunate selection in the late '90's have avoided anything with the Oprah stamp on it like the plague.

So imagine my joy when I very discreetly snoop at the lady sitting next to me reading her Kindle during our kids' basketball game on Saturday. I recognized the passage and my heart leapt with snooper's joy. She's reading Atlas Shrugged! On her Kindle! At a basketball game! How COOL is this?

I have a list of three must reads in no particular order: 1. Les Miserables - unabridged version. 2. The Peacegiver and 3. Atlas Shrugged.

Books so powerful I have read them over and over. Keep them on my nightstand and get all giddy when another member of general society finds them interesting too. It's rare. I usually get comments like "Those have too many pages." "I don't like to read books I don't understand." "You're a geek, don't ever recommend another book to me again."

And I skulk away in literary shame.

So here a normal, non-geeky member of society reading this book. In PUBLIC! I fully acknowledge this is not an actual validation of my entrance card to normalcy, but it's nice to be able to talk to some of you. She's not far enough into the book to analyze much of the content, and my wide-eyed violation of her personal space wasn't greasing the conversation skids, but I couldn't let it go. Like some sort of David Cassidy groupie of the '70's I'm reciting RANDom facts (See, that was a play on the author Ayn Rand's name - if you were cool like me I wouldn't have had to explain that to you.)

I was offering to let her borrow my "Who is John Galt?" sweatshirt and show her my early edition hardback copy. She was leaning away from me and suddenly snapped her head around yelling "What? Oh, I'll be right there...." as she ran away.

I get that a lot.