[Update: I’ve added a couple of books that I’d forgotten earlier.]

A perusal of my reading habits over the last few months shows how strangely my brain works. I’ll find myself fascinated by one topic, wanting to read and learn all about it. And then somehow my mind will drift over to another topic, and I’ll want to read and learn all about that. And apparently I haven’t really gotten into fiction lately. I’ve been all focused on being an autodidact, and unreal things have seemed a waste of time.

In the fall, I rediscovered my love for the theater, and my reading shifted accordingly. I wanted to learn all I could about it.

Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum

Musical Stages: An Autobiography by Richard Rodgers

Ghost Light: A Memoir by Frank Rich

Stephen Sondheim: A Life by Meryle Secrest

Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical “Follies” by Ted Chapin

Sometime after the new year, when gay marriage became big again, I decided to focus on gay politics and other gay issues.

Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage by David Moats

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins
(Actually, I only read the first 2/3 of this, after which I got bored. One might wonder why this book comes under the gay section of my list; it’s because I was thinking about AIDS and began wondering about the evolution of viruses.)

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Then, this spring, my inner geek emerged after a long slumber. I’ve still been in geek mode lately.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
(the one novel I’ve read recently — but it was worth it)

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (almost finished)

It’s weird how I’ll get on these extended in-depth kicks that somehow morph into or get replaced by other in-depth kicks. A couple of summers ago I was all about Plato and the “great books” and teaching myself ancient Greek. Before that, I took a class and wrote a screenplay. At one point I was really into doing jigsaw puzzles. As for books, I’ve had political biography phases, fiction phases, and so on.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find that one job that satisfies me, or even that one goal in life to achieve. And that might be OK.

Life’s a buffet, and I’m in the all-you-can-eat line.