In time, my appreciation of the written word expanded to encompass almost everything from science and technology to junk novels to "great literature," whatever that means.

Over a relatively short span of time, I'm generally reading three books: one at breakfast, one at bedtime and one during my treadmill activity at the gym.

It was a treadmill book that seized me recently. It was so gripping that it made me look forward to hying myself to the gym, which I do regularly, but not because I like to.

I believe in going to the gym in principle, but in practice I'd rather get my exercise running up bills or jumping to conclusions. I tend to agree with the fellow who said that if we were intended to touch our toes they would be closer to our knees.

Yet I frequently rushed off to the gym to get back to Love in the Time of Cholera. Though love stories are not my usual fare, I drank eagerly from what was ostensibly just a wonderful story of enduring love, but was actually a series of incisive though subtly woven commentaries on economics, politics, war, society and human behavior-all hiding behind a love story. I couldn't wait to finish the book so I could pass it on to friends.

Before I finished, I rushed to tell friends about my great discovery. When I ran into Joe, I started with "Hey, I just discovered a wonderful writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez." "Oh," he replied, "you must be reading The General in His Labyrinth." When I saw Sally, I again began to expound on my discovery. She interrupted with, "Oh, are you reading One Hundred Years of Solitude?"

And when I met Helen, whom I hadn't seen for many moons, she cut off my panegyric with, "I guess you know that he won a Nobel in literature."

It turns out that everybody I spoke to already knew about Marquez. My great discovery had already been discovered.

I wonder now about other people's discoveries.