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2010-09-30 - 12:37 p.m.

Amazing, the power of praise. Just now, I was sitting through a meeting in a conference room, watching the trees--still green--get blown about by this tropical storm that's making its way up the coast. Somebody said my name and I snapped to attention. I do a certain thing, it turns out, without being asked. This task is not something I particularly care about. And it was a funny feeling, sitting in that big, cold room, getting praised for being a functional human being. I felt some pride inside. I thought: I'll keep doing that thing, then. What I'm saying is, by the time that other part of my brain kicked in and said: don't feel pride for that, it was too late.

I read a thriller. I don't ever do that any more. It was a book about a detective trying to catch a serial killer in Stalinist Russia. I read a few pages, thought: this is catchy. Then I saw that it was a thriller but by then I was hooked. It felt like how it felt to read when I was 15 or 16, in high school. I didn't have any notion of what I should be reading or what I shouldn't. I read without filter: National Geographics, Sports Illustrated, books about baseball players, books about World War II. But my favorites were a particular kind of thriller, usually involving spies, a little sex, lots of suspense and tension. We had cable TV but I was tired of it. I liked music but had no money for CDs. This was before my family got the internet. So I'd get a new book--always hardcover--from the library or, rarely, from the bookstore. And this one author I liked, I read all of his books, read them twice or three times. When I got a new one, I'd read until my eyes hurt, until my back hurt. Then, I'd lay belly-down on my bed, a pillow under my hips, propping myself up with my elbows, and read by daylight, by room light, and, finally, by desk light, so that I didn't bother my younger brother. I've always been skinny, and was even skinnier at 15 or 16, and so my elbows, from reading that way, grew raw, and red.

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