To keep your brain functioning, read aloud to someone you love

If there's one thing I've learned in the last couple of days, it's that using my brain for things I haven't been using it for is almost like trying to start a car in sub-zero temperatures.

You turn the key, and the starter tries to get the battery to put out enough juice to get things going.

I really haven't been using my brain -- or at least pushing its limits -- for a very long time.

It isn't that I haven't been reading. I've been reading since before I was 3 and I'll probably keep doing it as long as my eyes hold out. I generally read to my lovely wife for two hours or more each evening. This year we have been focusing on non-fiction, mostly history and pretty much American history with a few volumes of French history and a couple of Great Britain as well.

We have made it through 30 books, and we'll probably finish No. 31 in the next day or two. We have devoured most of David McCullough, from his first book about the Johnstown Flood all the way up to his most recent about the Wright Brothers. We've done a good chunk of Doris Kearns Goodwin, including "Team of Rivals" about Abraham Lincoln and "No Ordinary Time," about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt..

Our favorite subject has been the other Roosevelt, and I think we have read five books about him, from McCullough's "Mornings on Horseback" to Goodwin's "Bully Pulpit," although to me the most interesting story was "River of Doubt," about Teddy's post-presidential trip deep into the rain forest of Brazil.


We read a terrific biography of Charles De Gaulle, "The General," and "The Affair" (about Dreyfus) and McCullough's "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris," about the Americans who did the Paris thing long before Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein were even gleams in their parents' eyes.

Oddly, we have become fascinated with sea stories. Failed arctic expeditions, amazing tales of survival in the Pacific (including the true story that probably inspired "Moby Dick") and Erik Larson's "Dead Wake," the last crossing of the Lusitania.

The most amazing sea book of all was Hampton Sides' "In the Kingdom of Ice," the story of the U.S.S. Jeannette, which became trapped in polar ice hundreds of miles from civilization. The crew essentially walked across the ice to Siberia and then battled the Russian winter to get to where they could find other people.

Most of them didn't make it, but it is truly astonishing that any of them survived.

At any rate, I have gotten sidetracked. I was trying to make the point that it isn't that I haven't been challenging my brain at all, but still, reading stories isn't exactly rocket science.

Believe me, I know. The person to whom I read used to be one of the leading rocket scientists in the entire world. When I think of the things she knew or knows, when I have seen some of the equations she created to figure some things out, I felt like a moderately intelligent insect.

For much of my life, if I wasn't the smartest person in the room, I could at least be included in the discussion. Since I met Nicole, I have been no better than second, and if my two adult children show up, I fall to third or fourth.

Sadly, though, my lovely wife is slowly slipping away with one of the family of diseases poetically called "the long goodbye." She was diagnosed last October and told she probably would have one or two good years left. We're nearly nine months into that, so I feel like we have reason to hope it might be two years instead of one.


There are signs. There have been a couple of times that I have read to Nicole for two hours and then gone to the bathroom before coming back to go to bed. "Aren't you going to read to me tonight?" she asks. When I tell her I just finished, she has no recollection of it.

We read every night, sometimes two or three times if she has trouble sleeping. I've had nights where I start reading at 5 a.m. and read for an hour and a half. Hey, except on days we have doctors' appointments, there's nothing forcing me to get up early.

This is an office?

Some nights are tougher than others. I'm tired, I get drowsy and I have to cut things short. There are occasional nights when I wish I didn't have to read at all, but I know that when -- not if, but when -- the time comes the needs more help than I can give her, I will miss the reading more than I can possibly know.

We've been together nearly 23 years, and the last few have been difficult. Nicole is understandably angry at what is happening to her and as the only other person around, I get the brunt of it. I don't always react well, but I'm trying to improve.

One problem I'm running up against these days is that I don't really get anything done. If I decide to rearrange my office, jamming 100 pounds of books, DVDs, music CDs and all sorts of memorabilia into 50 pounds of office.

A job that could be finished in one day winds up taking two weeks. I've been writing a book about my high school graduating class for more than seven years. I still have hopes of finishing it, if only I could make myself work.

Well, I'll have to try.

***

If you're interested, these are the non-fiction books we have read this year:

"A Day to Die For (1996: Everest's Worst Disaster)," by Graham Ratcliffe; "All the Truth is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid," by Matt Bai; "The Great Bridge," by David McCullough; "Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany," by Richard Lucas; "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism," by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

"The Affair: the Case of Alfred Dreyfus," by Jean-Denis Bredin; "The Path Between the Seas," by David McCullough; "Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire," by Peter Stark; "Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese-American Internment in World War II," by Richard Reeves; "The Wright Brothers," by David McCullough; "Into Africa: the Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone," by Martin Dugard; "Truman," by David McCullough; "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris," by David McCullough; "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure," by Matthew Algen; "In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex," Nathaniel Philbrick.

"In the Kingdom of Ice," by Hampton Sides; "The Elephant Voyage," by Joan Druett; "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania," by Erik Larson; "The River of Doubt," by Candice Millard; "Mornings on Horseback," by David McCullough; "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America," by Thurston Clarke, "Brave Companions: Portraits in History," by David McCullough; "Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America," by Jonathan Darman.

"The Glory and the Dream," by William Manchester; "The Great Hurricane of 1938," by Cherie Burns; "The Johnstown Flood," by David McCullough; "41: A Portrait of My Father," by George W. Bush; "The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France he Saved," by Jonathan Fenby; "Team of Rivals," by Doris Kearns Goodwin; "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt on the Homefront in World War II," by Doris Kearns Goodwin; "Beyond the Miracle Worker: the Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller," by Kim E. Nielsen.

To be fair, this was about the 15th time I read "Glory and the Dream," but the first time I read both volumes out load to Nicole. And yes, I'm as surprised as you that I bought and read "41" to my wife. Those who know me know that this book covers two extremes. I consider Poppy Bush the best Republican president since Eisenhower and his son the worst. Go figure.

I have plenty of good books queued up on my Kindle, including Jimmy Carter's newest, Mark Crispin Miller's book about the 2004 election, an apparently sympathetic bio of Jay Gould, Randy Shilts' wonderful "And the Band Played On" (which I read a long time ago), Leonard Gross's "The Last Jews in Berlin," John Krakauer's "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town" and a lot of others.