The night before I had an involved theater dream in which I was an actor. As a teen who did some acting in high school, I began having anxiety dreams around forgetting lines that have persisted over my entire life. But that wasn’t the point of this dream. It was more about sheer onstage confusion. Plus the actors and I improvised as we stalled on stage for someone to make an entrance.

I am doing a lot of nothing on this vacation. Spending time with family. Reading and splashing about in my son’s pool.

I made Lebanese flat bread on David’s grill yesterday afternoon for the heck of it. It just so happened that there was a recipe for this in last weekend’s New York Times. (link to recipe)

I am beginning to miss daily practice. I didn’t at first. And I am still disentangling my head from my silly day to day stuff back at home.

Luckily I have been distracting myself well in the in between times of dreaming and worrying about stuff.

Followed the release of Tony Blair’s memoir, “A Journey,” on this Wednesday.

Looked at  a copy of it yesterday in the bookstore. I might read it at some point. Here’s some interesting links about it: link to New York Times review, link to The Guardian interview with Blair on Brit newspaper web site & link to The Guardian editorial about it .

Then there’s David Corn’s bitter little article about a meeting with Bush Blair omits: link to “Tony Blair’s Big Lie of Omission” by David Corn on the Mother buy diazepam 15 mg Jones web site. Plus the old New York Times article (3/27/2006) that broke the story on the memo in which the leaders discuss last minute ideas on provoking the Iraq war. (link)

Very disturbing.

This morning’s reading included “Of Two Minds About Books” by Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller (link to article NYT 9/1/2010). It’s about e-reading and e-readers. Discussion of this rarely mentions reading on netbooks. It’s usually about the stereotypical idea of whether electronic reading devices are better or are going to replace books.

This always strikes me as missing the point. I haven’t read any discussion of what makes up a book: words? ideas? stories? paper and glue? Spending time with words seems to be below the radar or beside the point in many of these discussions.

Again yesterday at the bookstore I looked at Barnes and Nobles’s e-reader. The young woman came up to me and asked me if I wanted help. When I said no she proceeded to show me what a page of prose looked like on the reader (something I had already done before she approached me).  I thanked her and moved away from the reader.

I find myself much less interested in buying hard copies of books from bookstores and much less interested in browsing in them. This is definitely because of the increase in access I have to them via the Internet. Besides ebooks, I routinely use the Web to interlibrary loan books from my library or purchase them used (usually from a bookseller on Amazon) not to mention accessing and reading tons of articles.

Plus the Web allows me to follow my ideas and interest much more quickly and thoroughly than I used to. So that being a room full of books is much less of a singular opportunity to run down books and concepts I have been thinking about.

I console myself with the idea that the used books I purchase online are purchased directly from used book dealers. If I was still dealing in used books I would insist on having an online presence hopefully through Amazon.