the enemy is time

So, this past week my wife and kids have been out of town. While they were gone I was supposed to finish several projects around the house. What did I do instead? I read. How am I supposed to get anything done when there are so many good books in this world.
I ran across the Jack Reacher series a few years ago while wondering the stacks in the library. In a world that values the sensitive, new-aged man, there is something refreshing about a protaganist that harkens back to the days of tough, stoical men that will kick your ass. As thrillers go, Lee Child does a good job of keeping the action well paced. His books remind me a bit of Louis L'Amour; somewhat formulaic, but a fast read and very enjoyable. A good choice if you anticipating citing around an airport departure lounge for a while. You can take vicarious satisfaction as Reacher out thinks and out fights the bad guys. He is a man that just doesn't take the crap the rest of have to put up with every day of our civilised lives.

You don't know what you've got till its gone...

Another book I really enjoyed was A RETURN TO MODESTY: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. Published in 2000, I found her insight prescient and a refreshing counterweight to bombardment of exposed flesh that seemed to have reached a crescendo in the summer of 2004. In commenting on this book I must walk a careful line between sounding like a religious zealot demanding women be covered from head to toe and a letch lurking outside the local high school leering at the teenage girls.

Shalit writes intelligently about modesty and the effects of its absence. The effects she addresses in the book (according to my memory; please correct me if I am wrong) are mostly concerned with the trend of immodesty and the misery it brings to young women. I would have liked her thoughts on the effects all that skin has had on the male population as well. Either way, I think this is a book dealing with an important issue in a way that is both philosophically robust and approachable.