family similarities always surprise me. i know they shouldn't and they don't for the big, obvious stuff like our looks or tastes in food. but the subtle things... after years of not living at home for more than a month at a time, they just creep up on me and serendipitously appear.

for instance, in an aim conversation with my brother, he described one of his friends as having "a really contagious laugh." it's so odd that he and I are so different and have polar opposite types of friends and yet, I use the EXACT same phrase to describe some of the people i am most fond of.

in addition, today my dad and i were discussing the hobby of reading. He said that he has always thought of reading as much a necessity as water. If he's not doing anything, he'll read whatever scrap piece of paper, cereal box, or even the fine print on a coupon that's laying around. I'm like that too - we're our happiest when we're working our way through a book. one of the reasons he reads is for the sheer pleasure. he says that a sign of a good book is that he can "taste" it. to understand and feel so deeply that you taste it. I didn't know he used sense-oriented descriptions until today. I use them all the time when all else fails to reach my gut-feelings.

this is where the similarities for today end, though, because my dad also chooses to read for curiosity's sake. in my knowledge, he's always preferred non-fiction to fiction. He didn't discover until recently why and it's mainly a matter of language. while he craves pleasurable reading, he doesn't "taste" books as well in English, but in the last 25 years (living in Houston), he hasn't had much opportunity to get Korean books. That's why he gravitates toward filling the reading hole through the curiosity aspect. he likes the historical, documentary, informational type books in the English language. i vividly remember my dad reading DOS manuals right before bedtime! eeeeek.

again, that's one very big non-similarity between me and him. i LOVE to read for pleasure - to enter into whole other worlds and live and see through their eyes. but i don't read much for curiosity sake except little scraps here and there. i'd rather just hear information from what someone else has read or simply resort to making it up myself.