Check one off the list

(Update: link fix)

Did you ever hear of the concept of a list of X things to do before you die?

I might have heard of it for the first time when Fearless talked about it in Boomtown. Maybe half a decade ago? It kind of crystallized a vague notion that I'd had for years.

Some people have X = 1000, and I think my list is probably about that size, although I don't have a handy wallet-sized hardcopy like Fearless did. Whatever my own value of X, though, I'm do know that the percentage of items checked off is no more than 10%, even after imposing a severe reality filter.

But I did nail one of the biggies yesterday: I got to hear my favorite author read, in a room no bigger than half my apartment. He read two excerpts from recent books (Uncommon Carriers was one) and finished with a third piece, part of something about chalk, to be published in the New Yorker in about April.

If chalk makes you wonder, bear in mind that this guy once wrote an entire book about oranges, and I dare you to read the first ten pages and then try to put it down.

He didn't do a Q&A, and we didn't have enough time for me to wait in line to have a quick word, but that's probably for the best. My knees knock, my palms gush, and my brain threatens to go BSOD just thinking about the possibility in retrospect.

In my dreams, I would have brought my copy of Giving Good Weight, and instead of having him autograph it, I would have asked him to write, somewhere in the endpapers, the name of Otto's new restaurant. (Otto is the Brigade de Cuisine.)

John McPhee is the man.

Thanks, Clare.