Yesterday, I bought Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. I'm looking forward to start reading it today. ETA: I started reading the Benjamin Franklin book, and it is very good so far. I had two Hugh moments though. It was mentioned in the book how Franklin's father moved to Oxfordshire to apprentice with his older brother. So naturally when I read the word Oxfordshire, I thought "Hugh!" Then the book went on to mention when his father was in Oxfordshire the puritans started to really rise against the Roman Catholics, and thinking about the Calvinists made me think about Hugh.

It's Dr. Seuss' birthday! :party: After all these years, I'll freely admit that "Green Eggs & Ham" remains one of my favorite books of all time. Rhyming! And the glories of taking a risk and trying something new! Anyone else willing to admit to being a Seussophile?

Anyone who loves books really ought to love Dr. Suess. He's the bees knees.

Green Eggs and Ham and Yertle the Turtle were special favorites. I never really got into The Cat in the Hat.

I'm also a big fan of Horton Hatches the Egg. "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, 100 percent." (It's the hatchling that makes the story -- nurture v. nature.) It's the fact that Seuss managed so well to tell such complex issues: the power of love and devotion in an adoption allegory, the need to try new things, the strength of imagination, etc., in such seemingly simple language is what continues to make his work so lasting.

I'm a Seuss lover as well. How can you not be?

I always liked Scrambled Eggs Super. My cousin and I used to have contests to see who could recite it the fastest. "Scrambled eggs Super-Dee-Dooper-Dee-Booper, Special deluxe a-la-Peter T. Hooper."

Can't forget... One Fish Two Fish and Fox in Socks....

Ha! filmlover I started the Isaacson book because I saw a pic of Hugh carrying it upside down. I enlarged it in photoshop and figured out what book it was. (geek!) Anyway, great minds and all that. I really liked that book too. Lots of Hugh parallels, though admittedly I do tend to see them in every cloud in the sky...

I like Suess so much that when Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense started speaking like a Suess character I floved it.

I finished reading an excellent book called The Devil In The White City, about the 1895 Chicago World's Fair and a serial killer who took advantage of it, all fact but written with the pace of a great novel. Of course now I can't find it to tell you the author.

It was written by Erik Larson. Great book and hella creepy!

His book "Isaac's Storm," about the Galveston hurricane of 1900, is even better, I think. (He was doing research for the hurricane book when he ran across info on the White City, which led to that book.)

Ooh, I loved Devil in the White City. And now I must add to my summer reading list Isaac's Storm. I'm about 60 pages from finally finishing Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I love that this is the one Austen novel in which I'm not 100% sure from the beginning who the heroine's hero will be by the end of the story. I mean, I can make a really educated guess, but I'm not certain. It's fascinating.