I have recently been on a tear to soak up information, fiction, and all sorts of unrelated knowledge in all kinds of media. In the past month, for example, I finished reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens, a 990 page delight; I listened to the book, Guns Germs and Steel, a real eye opener that everyone should read; I also listened to the cassette Dale Carnegie Leadership Mastery, which provides some good tips; and am right now beginning to listen to His Excellency, George Washington, a best seller.

All of this came from my wandering through the stacks at the Greenwich Connecticut Library and picking up anything that suited my fancy. The tapes and CD’s each take from 6 to 14 hours to listen to and that sounds like a lot of time. But it really isn’t when you think about it. How much time do we spend in the car driving to work, walking the dog, just walking, or doing mindless work around the house? When I am doing all of that I try to put my headphones on and listen to Oliver Twist or The Odyssey (both of which are the full texts read by great narrators.)

So for the next several entries of this blog, I am going to discuss each of these works: Bleak House, Guns Germs and Steel, Dale Carnegie and His Excellency. None of them are connected as far as I can tell other than the fact that I picked them up at the Library and that they piqued my interest.