Lists. Life.

About a month or so ago, two boxes full of books mysteriously appeared on the path behind our apartment. I was far too lazy and cynical to deign to have a look. "There's probably nothing good in there, or if there was, it's alreay been picked over. People only get rid of clunkers, or Tom Clancy novels." The boyfriend, however, enthusiastically walked the ten or so yards to check it out, and came back with... nothing very good. Except for a Penguin Classics edition of Voltaire's Candide, and the #1 bestseller of 1977: The People's Almanac presents THE BOOK OF LISTS, by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace.

Boyfriend and I have been reading Candide together before bed. Really, what usually happens is that he starts reading to me, I doze off, and then the next night we're at Chapter XVI: "The adventures of our two travellers with two girls and two monkeys, and what happened to them amongst the savage Oreillons," and I'm totally lost. And we have to go back and reread the chapter before. And I fall asleep. It's a slim volume, but we'll probably be at it for a while.

Now that I've gotten my hands on it, I realize that THE BOOK OF LISTS is way too stimulating for bedtime reading. The titles alone are enough to get my heart racing: 8 Remarkable Escapes from Devil's Island; 10 Lethal or Incapacitating Durgs Stored by the CIA; 10 Birds That Could Not or Cannot Fly; 15 Prehistoric Things Alive Today; 15 Most Dangerous Airlines; 8 People Who Have Taken Heroin (famous people, that is, not just a list of random kids in Seattle); 8 Cases of Spontaneous Combustion; 8 Celebrities Who Have Had Vasectomies; The 10 Most Common Methods of Suicide; and, one of my faves: 15 Famous Events That Happened in the Bathtub.

The lists are arranged by topic: Chapter 11,"The Literary Life," includes 15 Authors Who Wrote Best-Sellers in Prison and 10 Memorable Books That Never Existed. Looking for 10 Eyewitness Accounts of Levitation? Find it in Chapter 19, breezily entitled "Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Life." As if this wasn't enough, intersperced are subjective lists from notable personages, like Jeane Dixon's 10 Greatest Psychics of All Time, Dr. Margaret Mead's 10 Best Anthropology Books or Studies, Arthur Koestler's 10 Favorite Dinner Guests From All History, and Clifford Irving's 10 Best Forgers of All Time. I'm dizzy already, assiduously mining the contents for choice nuggets to share here with you. From the year my brother was born.

THE BOOK OF LISTS has actually inspired us to start our own list, called "Things in the Road, 2008." A compilation of things we've heard reported to be on various roads in the Bay Area via the KQED traffic report. So far:

a rooster
something dumped from a truck
a body
baked goods
a swarm of bees
buckets
a chair
rolls of insulation

It's a casual, non-scientific sort of list; we add to it when hear something good.

In other news: I have a interview for a job at this place.

In yet other news: I've cooked the rice, boyfriend is chopping and stir-frying the vegetables. As I type, I whisper: what am I telling myself that isn't true? Or: what is the truth I'm not telling?