mistersugar: Good reading

Good reading

As I’ve written here before, I’ve always considered myself a reader before a writer (“To write good poetry, you have to read the best poets,” said one poet on this recent episode of WUNC’s State of Things). I love magazines, but I also enjoy exploring the treasures within a good reference book.

Yesterday, I finally bought myself a copy of the excellent law reference A Practical Companion to the Constitution : How the Supreme Court Has Ruled on Issues from Abortion to Zoning so that I can learn a bit more about the legal underpinnings of our national policies. (Erin had her Constitutional Law exam on Monday, and despite a computer crash midway through the test, she’s still jazzed about how much she learned in the class.)

Another recent addition to my reference shelf is The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, 18th Edition, an invaluable guide to medicine and health. I’ve been using The Merck Manual of Medical Information, Second Edition, a more consumer-friendly version of the manual, for the last couple of years. (Both books have been gifts of Merck & Co., which I received at conferences or events related to my journalism education or AMA blogging presentation. Look for a Jeff Jarvis-inspired full disclosure in the next week or so.)

And yet when someone gets sick, I often reach first for Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook, the book that was a constant reference during my Peace Corps service in Vanuatu. (Last fall, I wrote about my suspicion that I’d had Dengue fever. I learned this week that the study I volunteered for in October confirmed that I did indeed have type-2 Dengue.)

On a walk across campus today, I made a note to write about my reference book collection and these new additions. Just before I sat down to begin this entry, I looked in on Anna and Malia. Here’s what I saw:

That’s right: Anna fell asleep while reading a dictionary. That’s my girl!

evening on 04/26/06 in "Readings" | permalink

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