This is what I read: My List on Goodreads

My friend spent months campaigning for me to join this site. I shrugged her off again and again saying I was involved in too many social networks already.
“I already HAVE a couple of MySpace accounts!” I cried. “I don’t have time to deal with this book thing!”
But I caved. And I found I loved writing about what I was reading and the friend who’d asked me to join loved reading what I was writing. In a way, I wrote them all for her. For a while, I wrote about almost every book I read. Then I got behind and now I only manage to post when I get inspired to, despite the hundreds of snippets of what I would say, running around in my head.
I think, too, the friend who implored me to join had a baby and understandably didn’t have much time to read or to read about reading and so I lost my motivation for sharing all the thoughts about books.

You need a little armor on when talking with a crazy person. His attack will not be predictable; He’s breaking rules of the social contract left and right. So you gotta get a little creative with your armor. Strap on an astro turf welcome mat, extra protection from one with a plastic flower. String some butter dishes together. Put a colander on your head. Pull on your rain boots. Wrap a measuring tape around your wrist. If you have a sandwich board handy, definitely get into that. Boxing gloves will help you. So will a clown nose. You might just have to don these in your mind but it will be worth it.

The young Polonius was heartsick. For months he had been pining for Calpurnia. Well, he called her his Calpurnia, though that was not her name. He met her at University while preparing for his role as Caesar there. She was charmed by him. He was an excellent talker. He knew things and liked to share them. He was funny too, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. He asked if he could escort her out and she agreed. He would plan elaborate outings, meticulously planned and orchestrated. He even arranged the occasionally chance meeting of friends who would speak well of him to his Calpurnia.
He started calling her his Calpurnia not long into their courtship. She found it amusing though she didn’t understand the reference. At least she hadn’t until she came to see him play his Caesar and she found she did not LIKE Calpurnia and that she did not LIKE the idea of being a politician’s wife, even in jest. And she could tell he relished the role. She could see that he WAS ambitious and that he would ignore his wife’s wisdom and plunge straight into a political blood bath.
The next time he came to call, she refused him. And the time after that and the time after that. By the time he understood what was happening, his Caesar had closed and he was back to finishing his studies and they all seemed meaningless without his Calpurnia. He would stand below her window and shout Roman poetry. He would stand where she walked and he would cry as she passed by.
He was surly to everyone. He stopped going to class. Eventually, he holed up in his rooms and shouted at anyone who came in. Usually, he spoke to them as if they were characters from Julius Caesar. He called his teacher a cobbler and his landlord a senator.
It all turned around, though, when his friend came by with his sister. She’d been warned of his affliction and she found it interesting so when he saw her and said, “Is that my Calpurnia?”
She smiled, held out her hand and said, “Caesar. I never stood on ceremonies.”
And her took her hand and kissed it.
When she blushed, he suddenly knew himself again and found that he wanted nothing more than to know her, too and not as Calpurnia but whomever she happened to truly be.

This is one of the metaphors for crazy that seems right on. Someone on the crazy train does, in fact, seem gone, as if they went on a trip somewhere and left a copy of their body to carry on in their place.
In some cases, it feels as if the person hasn’t gone so far. You think you could snap your fingers or clap and find them returned to you. But some people are very far gone. They disappeared off to Borneo, or off to (opposite of Borneo) if you lived in Borneo.
And they usually go without a forwarding address or a phone number where they can be reached or even findable on the internet.
Sometimes a person is so far gone, you can only reach them by hiring a plane and flying messages over the mountains in smoke.

It’s funny how delusions are almost always of grandeur. When someone thinks they’re someone else, it’s almost always a famous person, historical figure or a god. When a person loses their wits, they almost never think they are a plumber or a receptionist. No one is ever hospitalized for thinking they are a clerk at Walmart when they are, in fact, a CEO. Likewise, people don’t imagine the people around them with delirious of – what’s the opposite of grandeur? Diminishment? Delusions are like the water under boats, they raise everyone up. Not to say that everyone raises up good. Delusion can cast your mother as a demon or the crossing guard as a mass murderer but it doesn’t really cast a president as a crossing guard or a movie star as a barista.

He thought I was very proper, like a librarian.
“All business,” he said.
He knows better now but it’s funny how those first impressions linger. He can take himself back to that vision very easily, remember me as the proper business lady, while simultaneously understanding me and a multitude of my quirks better than anyone before him.

What is the origin of this expression? Is it related to the harp? Because of all the relentless instruments to choose from, this one would seem to be the least intrusive. I’d have thought still bag-piping on my daughter, or trumpeting or drumming (where we get banging on about my daughter, perhaps) or dijereedoo-ing on my daughter or even bassoning on my daughter. But harping, well, a harp evokes a quiet, melodic sense, repetitive, possibly, by not so’s you’d really notice.
Unless it’s a jaw harp. Those things are relentless, repetitive and irritating.

I have surely said this before but I don’t know when nor can I remember how, but this is the sort of line I particularly love. It is simple in its construction and its meaning. It’s easily understood but it’s got some STYLE. It feels like an utterly unique way to express “What do you think of that?” or “How ‘bout this?” or “What do you say about that?” or “Whaddya know?”
And it has a rhythm that rolls right off the tongue even in the midst of a very prose-y section of the play. It’s a sentence I feel like I could say 10 times in a row and still be enjoying it on the 11th.