and now for something a little different

This is what the forward of the book I'm currently reading states:

I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nor were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If indeed I had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not lived the extraordinary.

This is my story.

—AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL, age 39
Chicago
June 2004

There's also a Reader's Agreement at the beginning which asks me, among other things, to agree to no pretend half-reading of the book while ordering takeout food, to agree that playwright should be spelled playwrite, to agree that while some women may look sophisticated wearing a shawl others look foolish, and to agree that while black is technically the absence of all colour, it makes more sense for it to be all colours combined. On the copyright page it tells me that it is not responsible for the weather, the scalding nature of soup, or for the short window of time between bananas not being ripe enough, and being rotten. These items, by the way, are in tiny print and easy to miss, so I'm pleased that I caught them.

What is this book I'm referring to? Why, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life of course. In it the author tells about the moments and emotions of her life in delightful and various-length alphabetized entries from A to Z. Now I can't seem to get very far because every time I start a new page I realize that I don't want to just READ this book, I want to HAVE it. So I keep putting it down thinking that I might as well return it to the library and wait until I have my own copy. And it occurred to me too that what I find so appealing about the book (apart from the fact that dysfunction does not appear to play a role) is that not only is it an entertaining and random (yet organized—woohoo!) hodgepodge of admissions, but it's the type of book I would have wanted to write myself. Could SEE myself writing in fact.

Now, how does that Edward Gorey line go again? Ah yes:

Books. Cats. Life is sweet.