December 8, 2007 -- Saturday afternoon

Reading The Lion's Game, by Nelson DeMille. It's his second time through. He picked it up again because it's so prophetic in regards to what's going on with terrorism today.

He reads all the time, two or three books in a week.

A favorite author--Robert Ludlum. He likes how the stories jump all over the world. It's really something. There are so many good novels out there, he said, that are so historically correct as well as being entertaining.

It was his Jewish scholar grandfather who got him into reading. His grandfather believed in an education--starting at age two. He has memories of lying down in the drawing room (he's English) and writing poetry at the age of four, having college level textbooks thrust upon him.

He took the train up to San Francisco from San Diego and sat on the lower level, for the seniors, and remarked how beautiful it was to see all of the seniors reading; but, on the upper level, the young people were not reading. They were busy with their little machines and cell phones, wasting time not reading.

His own book--it'd be about travel, in a Graham Green Travels with My Aunt-esque way. He's met so many people in so many places. In 1972, he was in La Paz during an uprising and when he stepped out onto the balcony of his hotel to see what was going on, a bullet whistled by two inches from his ear. Another poignant memory--watching foreigners see San Francisco for the first time. It was, he said, so beautiful.