Reading A Book

On his most recent business flight, the traveler tucked several novels into his shirt pocket and, as a last-minute precaution against having the book go blank, tossed an extra battery into his flight bag.One does not usually associate extra battery life with reading novels, but in the case of the Voyager Co.'s Expanded Books -- books designed to be read on an Apple Computer Macintosh Powerbook screen instead of on paper -- battery life becomes important.It...

CHICAGO - Seattle did it first. Los Angeles is doing it next. But this city of ethnic neighborhoods and exaggerated blue-collar grit - former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka likened the town and the football team to "a bunch of guys named Grabowski" - is where the United States' hottest intellectual trend really took off. Mayor Richard M. Daley last fall asked every resident of this city of 3 million to read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The response to One Book, One Chicago was electric.

Don't believe what they say about a "dry" heat. Heat is heat and, if anything, August heat is the worst. At 98 in the shade and no rain for weeks, the orange sun setting over the red clay oil fields made Oklahoma look like Mars. Kelly didn't watch to see the bus pull out of the parking lot. Turning her back on the cloud of orange dust she dragged her suitcase across the gravel lot and into the diner.Inside, she made her way to the counter, leaving behind a wakof casual glances. She was in her early twenties, thin, and had long, dirty blond hair pulled back and held by a black tattered cowboy hat. She wore a black studded halter top, tight jeans that were too worn in the seat, and sandals.

GROWING up as an only child, I was always able to entertain myself by reading. It seems to me I must have read at birth. I can remember begging my mother to read me the book with the beautiful pictures. Soon, I could read the story . . . actually, because I memorized all the words as Mother read the story again and again.Books have been a mainstay to me through my life and in recent years have perhaps preserved my sanity. They carried me through a most dreadful experience, the sudden death of my husband.

Tonight, tens of millions are expected to watch the final episode of the second installment of "Survivor." Tomorrow, tens of millions will gab about the ending, second-guessing how it all came down to Colby and Keith and Tina, and how they knew all along that Colby (or Keith or Tina) would be the final winner. The rest of us - those we'll call the Conavida Tribe (roughly translated as "Tribe With-a-Life") - have two choices. We can draw ourselves up haughtily and sneer, "Oh, I don't own a television machine."

When Sheryl Preiss wrote to Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston questioning the school district's summer homework policy, she had no idea what she was setting off. The letter from the Owings Mills mother not only resulted in the elimination of mandatory summer work at many middle and high schools, it ignited a countywide debate over how much schools should infringe on their students' summer vacations. "My children give 100 percent-plus throughout the school year," said Preiss, a dental hygienist and homemaker, adding that she is a firm believer in recommended summer reading lists but not required ones.

Gay characters coming out in prime time is nothing new. In fact, “Coming-out narratives are cliches,” according to Ron Becker, author of “Gay TV and Straight America” (Rutgers University Press, 2006). “They were big in the 1970s and '80s, but even by the 1990s, it was almost a cliché on television,” the Miami University professor says. But a quarterback on a pro football team coming out in the locker room to his teammates, “There's some real potential for drama in that context,” Becker says.

NEW YORK -- Dry martinis, thick steaks and fat cigars are proving that everything old can be cool again.Next up, that symbol of thoughtful repose, the pipe.Sales of pipes rose about 25 percent last year as men scouring smoke shops for the ultimate cigar are seeking a fresh thrill in briar, corncob and meerschaum."They're not going to choose cigarettes; that's not their style. They're not going to choose snuff; that's not neat enough. They're looking for something elegant," said Richard Carleton Hacker, author of "The Ultimate Pipe Book."

Stephen G. Bloom, a San Francisco-based journalist who had seen it all and had enough, chucked it in the early '90s and moved his family to Iowa, home of the Hawkeyes and lots of corn, but precious little of his beloved Jewish culture. "You can get bagels in Iowa," says the University of Iowa journalism professor. "But they taste more like unsweetened doughnuts." He was feeling very much like a stranger in a strange land when he stumbled upon a magazine article about a sect of Hasidic Jews called the Lubavitchers, who in 1987 moved from the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn to a tiny Iowa town called Postville to start a kosher slaughterhouse.

A group called TV-Free America is urging parents to turn off their sets next week and spend the time with their children, reading a book or playing outside. About a million people are expected to participate in the National TV Turnoff. If your family plans to go cold turkey, we want to talk to you. Please call Sundial at (410) 783-1800, punch in the 4-digit code 6217, and leave your name and telephone number. (For other local Sundial numbers, see the SunSource directory on Page 2A.)