I just spent a lot of time at Loganberry Books. There I was reminded of The Shark in Charlie's Window and a few other books of my childhood. I'm still searching for a few others, like the one about a boy who finds a key in the woods that brings him good luck (e.g. he thinks the cat ate his brother's favorite fish until he approaches the aquarium with the key, whereupon the black fish reappears among the ferns), and one about sailing and King Solomon's mines, and most especially the series of children's biographies that I devoured: Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, Helen Keller, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman. I had a Scholastic biography of Helen Keller with the Braille alphabet in low relief on the back cover; the front cover showed her sitting in a tree (facing left). I remember that it mentioned how she swam (by tying a rope around herself and a tree, so she could find shore again).
I reread Geek Love this week: I recommended it to Egg just before she moved and she wound up borrowing it in audio to listen to on her cross-country drive. (She is loving it, thank heavens.) Also I just rewatched "Freaks." Also HBO's new series Carnivale, which RDC and I might be alone in liking.
The first time I saw this dentist I had Lying Liars with me, without its jacket. This time I had Geek Love with me, and he and I talked about it some. He asked me if I knew whence the term "geek" originated and I pointed out the obvious, that I was reading Geek Love (the word's meaning is clearly suggested in the first score of pages).
RDC said he was a cool dentist, and he is.