1981

I had one of those rare reading moments last month: a long flight home from Houston, a copy of Cormac McCarthys The Road, opera on my iPod to drown out engine roar and babies' cries and a battery-depleted laptop. When we landed at BWI people squeezed by me as I turned the last few pages, tears streaming down my face. I was incredibly moved by McCarthys grim and hopeful novel, and I wondered what classmates were reading.

Kevin Lynch wrote that he just "finished the John Ledyard biography. It was on the new releases table at the bookstore and I said to myself, how could I not read this?"

He told me that he gets up early and reads the "local newspaper, The Oregonian, and as much of The New York Times and The Wall StreetJournal as time permits. Otherwise, most of my reading gets done on airplanes. I carry a couple of issues of The New Yorker in my briefcase. TheAnnals of Medicine articles by Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman that appeared in the magazine during the last few years are now compiled into books—terrific stuff."

Kevins final reading habit falls into what he called the "Aw, shucks" category: "I read a chapter from the complete collection of Thomas the Tank Engine to our son Joe every night. He can read it himself at this point (he just turned 7) but the ritual is not one either of us wants to give up."

From the British Virgin Islands Tom Zurich e-mailed to say that he just read Janet Wallach's Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell:Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally ofLawrence of Arabia. Bell lived in Iraq in the early 1900s and, Tom wrote, "was in favor of self-rule, getting the British out of the mess they were in. Sound familiar? She was an amazing woman, more amazing given the times in which she lived."

Jane Alexander is reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and favorites include McEwan's Saturday and Roth's Everyman. Jane continued: "I would read all the time if I could, but work and kids' sports schedules consume nearly all of my time."

From Rhode Island Cathy Haley Rost wrote to tell me, "Lynne Gaudet recommended Jodi Pic-Coults books to me, and I have read almost all of them—a great beach read. Now my 14-year-old daughter is going through them. My 11-year-old son and I read together and we love books about sharks. We are currently reading Susan Casey's The Devil's Teeth:A True Story of Obsessionand Survival Among America's Great White Sharks."

And what's Hap Brakeley reading? FoundingBrothers by Joseph J. Ellis—a good story, Hap commented, "about the lives of many of our Founding Fathers, including Adams, Burr, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and Washington."

Other news? Anne Swire is the new CEO of the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation. It enables single parents of children with life-threatenting illnesses to care for their children full time by relieving financial burdens when other resources are exhausted. This foundation responds to families' immediate needs, and requests for assistance can range from a wig for a self-conscious teenager after chemotherapy to an airline ticket for a grandparent's visit to cash to protect a home from foreclosure. You can find it with a Google search—darn powerful stuff.

My boy finished kindergarten last week and we are on to camps this summer, an art one and a music one. Will be in southern New Hampshire, on Silver Lake near Harrisville, in the middle of August. Feel free to stop by.

4807 Dover Road, Bethesda, MD,20816-1772; aoakes@mrsh.org; 2Wilson St., Wellesley, MA 02482; jkoeninger@comcast.net