As I said in the comments of another post a few days ago, I’ve turned this buggy down a different road and am reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln. For those of you who didn’t know already, I’ve had a crush on Lincoln pretty much my entire life. Whenever I read about him I feel like Monica Lewinsky watching TV to see if Bill Clinton is wearing that special tie. It’s all stalker-y and weird. But I can’t help myself.
I’ve never read this book before, and I’ve read tons of books on Lincoln. This showed up in the Kindle store as being published in late 2011 and so I just figured I was reading a definitive new biography. A few GoodReads reviews later I discovered that this book was actually published in the early 1990s; what’s “New” about it is the paperback release and lower price, hence its availability in the Kindle Store. In other words, it’s from the Black Hole time.
In the Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers, he says that to be an expert in a topic one must have 10,000 hours (that’s 416 24-hour days, 1250 8 hour days, 3.5 years of 8 hour days) invested in it. I figure this makes me an expert on books, my marriage*, Harry Potter, knitting, writing, the Bible, the internet, cooking and talking with my sister on the phone. So, obviously that’s a list that a lot of people will consult me about for my valuable insights.
The trouble with my particular 10,000 hours when it comes to books, though, is that for about five years, from 1991 to 1996, I have a black hole in my life. Whenever something comes up in any topic relating to those years I have no clue. Those were the years I was first married and first moved to Nashville and it seems as though I was in a bubble of adjusting to several major life changes all at once. As far as my mind is concerned, the entire world was on hold.
And that’s why I haven’t read the Lincoln book until now. It’s odd, feeling like you missed part of the world’s turning.
Speaking of which, it comes to my attention that there will be two new movies this fall and winter about Abraham Lincoln. I’m prepared to be really annoyed with the world, and I’m going on record NOW as saying that I’ve thought Lincoln was full of sexy intrigue from the time I was like 6 or 7, if not earlier. Whenever movies come out people are always finding the supposedly unglamorous characters intriguing. I wish I had a dollar for every time I read someone on LiveJournal say that Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort was Teh Hawtness. And it’s going to happen with Lincoln. That makes me think I should ready myself for another black hole as I withdraw from the world to avoid it all.
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*I’m not joking about this. If you think marriage is a passive exercise that doesn’t require daily involvement you really need to re-examine your ideas about marriage. Unless you aren’t married in which case I salute you for your strength of character and resolve in going it unpartnered.
