If you don't want to get Alzheimer's . . .

Then you should eat blueberries and learn a new skill. That's what an article by Elaine Jarvik in the D-news the other day said. Which is why I have decided to take up the air guitar. I've been practicing riffs by the Black Keys all morning. Yes! I know! I'm amazing!

In other irrelevant news, I ate a steak salad at the Tin Angel for lunch. It wasn't as good as the life-changing steak salad I ate at the ESPN Zone this summer, but dude. A steak salad is a steak salad is a steak salad, and all of them make my life worth living.

Now onto the real business of the day. I appreciate your posts about boys and readings. Am looking for further enlightenment, so if you haven't contributed, please do. Meanwhile, I have another question. Am currently reading a collection called PARIS STORIES by Mavis Gallant, which I think a certain friend of mine would ADORE. But I hesitate giving it to her for this reason--do books as gifts feel like burdens? Or not?

I realize this is a strange question for a former bookseller to be asking, but it has occurred to me that when people give me books, I always feel obligated to read them and guilty when I don't. At the same time, I would have never read one of my favorite books--THE LOST GARDEN by Helen Humphreys--if Betsy hadn't given it to me one year for Christmas. So I am double-minded on the subject.

Your thoughts?