I'm probably the last person in my circle of friends to read The Kite Runner, but I'm about halfway through it now. So sad and so beautiful. Someone lent me The Long Emergency, but I haven't been able to face it yet. On a recent road trip, I listened to Stormy Weather, a Carl Hiassen novel, which, like most of his fiction, is a complex, rousing chase through the wilds of south Florida, with an environmentalist message cleverly hidden in the highly entertaining plot.

Meanwhile I'm reading multiple textbooks for fall classes--not nearly as beautiful though some are pretty sad.