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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Time Machine

Kayla of Shut the Fridge won the Celebrity sTalker book giveaway.  This is actually old-ish news, but I kept forgetting to mention it.  I was too busy this week writing about hot flashes and cauliflower.  Congratulations, Kayla!  I actually have the book packaged up, and I'll be mailing it out Tuesday.  Unless I forget to bring it with me, the way I left Theo's care package of homemade banana muffins baked with a mother's love lying on the kitchen table last week as I ran out the door to take the kids to art class.

At least books don't get moldy.

And here is the point where I should announce the next book giveaway, right?  It's The New Kings of Nonfiction.  It's over 400 pages, and I am currently bogged down somewhere in the middle of it.  Not that it isn't a good book, mind you; but it's a collection of nonfiction pieces compiled by Ira Glass (of This American Life fame), so my interest level fluctuates according to which piece I am reading.

What disturbs me is this: I recognized one of the pieces, an essay by Malcolm Gladwell that I remembered reading (and enjoying) in The New Yorker a few years ago.  Well, maybe as many as 6 years ago, even.  Or 4?  Maybe it was only 4.  Annoyed I couldn't remember, I turned to the page in the book that gives the copyright dates of the different essays.  Yes, there it was.

Published in The New Yorker in 1999.

When reading, beware of wormholes...
1999?  Nineteen Ninety-Nine.  Could that be possible?  For those of you who are slow at math, that was 14 years ago...  


14 years...that's more than a decade, so why did it seem like I had read it recently?  In 1999, Brian, Rachel, and Susie hadn't even been born yet.  I first read that Gladwell essay in a completely different era, back when I was still a youngish mother of three with a face that didn't sag, when I had only a dial-up connection and dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

Apparently, I blinked, and 14 years flew by.  Which means, next thing I know, I am going to be eligible for Medicare.  This whole passage of time phenomenon freaks me out.

Anyway, I should be done with this wormhole/book  in a day or two.  Leave a comment if you are interested in being the next person to read it! 






[Book image: Goodreads] 
[Wormhole image: Radio Freethinker]
on

7 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2013

    Oooh! Pick me! Pick me! I love Ira Glass!!

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  2. Korinthia KleinJanuary 25, 2013

    I kind of freak out every time I think of college as not being ancient history and realize it was twenty years ago. It does go by in a blink.

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  3. KaylaJanuary 25, 2013

    Yay! Can't wait to get it....we are heading out on a beach vacation soon...maybe I will get it on time. Yes, I said beach vacation. You know....we big families have to travel in the off season to be able to afford things. We aren't even going to Florida....but, South Carolina! I can just seem myself bundled up in my mittens on the beach reading the book! :)

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2013

    Happily, I believe Gladwell to be rather timeless.
    Congrats to your lucky winner!

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013

    i am excited to read it! That happens to me when i think about say celebrities that died or shows that went off the air. DH and i will have arguments like "that was before Parker" and I will say "surely we had Olivia by that time..i remember"...time machine i'll tell ya!

    Liz D
    userdv4264@aol.com

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  6. AndreaJanuary 28, 2013

    Ooh I'm curious to see what Ira Glass likes to read...

    In 1999 I was a freshman in high school. When our class president posted that she had started a page on Facebook for planning our ten-year reunion this year, it freaked me out a little.

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  7. the_happy_hausfrauJanuary 28, 2013

    So this Time Machine phenom doesn't just happen to me? Phew. One of my kids started to sing that ancient ditty "Back to Life" by Soul ll soul and I started telling him all about how that used to be MY jam just a few years ago. Then I did the math and realized the last time I sang along to it was on my way home from a job interview in...wait for it...

    1991.

    Nice post, and I do love me some Ira Glass. I'd be honored to add this book to the tower of tomes I have on my nightstand.

    Jenny

    ReplyDelete