A dare, a podcast, and a book

Last week, I was dared to do something I wasn't sure I could get through.  The dare?  Go for the remainder of the week without reading a book.  Not one.  For four days.  I couldn't think of the last time I had gone 12 hours without, let alone 96.  But, like the kids in A Christmas Story, I'm not one to back down from a triple-dog dare, no matter how stupid, so I accepted.

I did great for the first leg of the dare and even started to gloat about how silly the dare was; I could quit reading any time I wanted.  However, by the second day, things were getting a little shaky.  I kept having to pass the library basket full of books calling out to me, wondering why I had abandoned them.  I'm convinced that somewhere in the third day a book called out, "C'mon!  Just read one page!"

Instead, I turned to my podcast of "This American Life," my favorite show on NPR (if you've never heard it, WCPL does have Season One and Season Two of the Showtime version of the show).  Cruelly, the week's show was titled "The Book That Changed Your Life."  The entire hour was devoted to the impact of books on the lives of individuals.  It got me thinking: if I was having a problem going four days without a book, surely there's a book that I could say changed my life.  The more I thought about it, though (and, determined to win that stupid dare, I had plenty of free time to think), I realized I couldn't point to one book with as much impact on me as, say, the works of  Laura Ingalls Wilder did on a young woman who moved from New York City to De Smet, South Dakota because of Wilder's books.  What I did realize, however, is the overall impact of books on me.  Whether they add information to my "random bits of trivia" file, prompt me to think about things in a new way, or entertain me, books have been a constant for me. 

Now that the dare is over (I'm not sure whether to be proud that I made it, but I did), I'm diving back into the library basket.  I just finished Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America, an amazing book about about one man's work to end poverty by transforming Harlem and the lives of the children in it.  Canada's approach is dubbed the "conveyor belt," making sure children are given access to services and are expected to meet higher educational demands.  As a result, 100% of the children in his kindergarten program have tested at or above test levels for the past six years, a result that is notable in any school district, let alone in the midst of Harlem.  It was an inspiring book about a group of people who face incredibly hard challenges every day.  It put the challenge of my four-day experience without books in perspective...still, I enjoyed reading the book so much, it affirmed that it's not a challenge I'll be repeating any time soon.