February 28, Thursday afternoon -- Reading Alexandre Dumas

Reading The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. He heard about it while watching Sleepers, where it's mentioned three times. To the characters in the movie, the Count of Monte Cristo was an inspiration to them, because it's also about a prisoner and it gave them comfort and hope. He got the abridged version instead of the 1300 page version, he said, because it's easier to travel with. He likes to read on BART and, when the weather is nice, outside at lunch in the sun.

Before this he read Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus, which he heard about while watching The Wire. It is, like The Count of Monte Cristo, about hope--it's about a guy who is punished by Zeus for giving man hope. In The Wire, Clay Davis was reading it.

Some favorites: The Coldest Winter Ever, by Sister Souljah; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet A. Jacobs; The Color Purple, by Alice Walker; and The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, in which a boy is pursuing his dream and at one point he meets someone who never pursued their dreams. Coelho provides this contrast and the reader, through identifying with the boy, receives hope to pursue their own dreams.

If he were to write a book it'd be about history. That's what he studied in college. It might be the history of a building, he said, gesturing toward the glossy, glass walled Fidelity building across the street. It begins with a thought, then a drawing, a blue print, then a building and something historic, a monument to the past might be--as was in the case of the Fidelity building-- destroyed for its place, and you might not know until later that the old building's history was something that should have been, might have been valued. You can never tell what is going to be historical.

When he was a kid he liked Marvel comics.