I had such a nice stretch of reading over the summer. Then work picked up and I think I've read about 15 pages of one book since Labor Day.

Anyway, here are some random notes from recent reading:

• The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon Wood, based on these first 15 pages, seems promising. Wood is such a great writer.

• But I'm not sure I'm in the mood to read about Franklin, so I also picked up Hip: The History by John Leland. I skimmed a few pages at Barnes & Noble a few months ago and it seems like light, but reasonably substantive, reading.

• I really want to re-read Tim McCarver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans. I remember it as being so high-level and dense--McCarver is a walking supercomputer having processed all baseball situations into high-probability predictions--that you actually have to sit with a diagram of a baseball diamond as you read it. The last time I tried reading this book, I had just finished final exams in law school, so it was just too much.

• Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs was good. There's no shortage of wit here; he is a sharp writer for sure, with a quirky perspective on life. However, in some places, he just tries too hard to be funny. The chapter about his cleaning lady, for example, is hilarious until you get to the part that is supposed to be the punchline ("in pennies"). It just seems overproduced and something more subtle would have been much funnier. Also, what's this with complaining about people who say hi to you on the street? Nobody forced you to write a bestselling memoir. Famous people are defiinitely entitled to their private lives, but complaining about this in your next book seems tacky and disturbs a memoir that is otherwise very enjoyable.

As a side note, I loved the article in last week's Times magazine about interruption science. I've always believed that the proliferation of productivity channels has made people less, not more, productive. I immediately changed the setting on Eudora to check for new mail every 30 minutes. I'm not sure if this is cause and effect, but the week that followed saw record productivity.