RandomBird is writing a memoir in books -- her life, as glimpsed through the books she was reading at the time. For instance, her love affair with modernism started (with Hemingway... I really should give him another try) at the same time she got her FIRST REAL BOYFRIEND. (I'd venture to guess the former outlasted the latter.) If you're any kind of a language/lit geek, it's good reading.

...on the topic of Little Women: As an eight-year-old I was most struck by a scene early on in the book where the March girls piled crap on their backs and walked around the house symbolically (or perhaps almost literally) "carrying their burdens." It was at this point that I first discovered the remarkable power of the way that words were attached to physical action. Prior to this, words were just words. Previously, books had simply created vivid stories in my mind that I would be left thinking about for days after I was finished. Little Women showed me that words were the cornerstones of the way in which we wrap our minds around the world, the only way in which we can wrap our minds around the world.

Just for something completely different, she's also watching the entire first season of 24. RandomBird is blogging for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and you can sponsor her here.