Have gone through several books since the last time I mentioned it here. The most interesting have been the non-fiction books. I did Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald, fascinating account of the ten years that led up to Enron's demise. At the moment it's a book by Richard Hack about Howard Hughes. I knew he was a recluse, but I had no idea how much so. When I think of someone being a recluse, I think of them demanding privacy. Hughes took it to extremes though. For instance, he never lived in a 'home' that he owned, although he spent years in a Vegas hotel he owned. He owned it because he didn't want to get kicked out by the owners clamoring over lost revenue by his presence. Even then he didn't own the property, just the company that ran the place. Another interesting fact about his reclusivness was the fact that for most of his adult life he spent his time in a completely darkened room, in the same Barcalounger, watching movies. He had people waiting on him hand and foot so much that it caused him to age rapidly in later years. He would spend years in the same room, in the same chair, communicating with aides and assistants through hand written memos, some of whom went for years without laying eyes on him. Even his wife was kept away for the last nines years of their marriage. This was due to his obsessive-compulsive behavior toward being contaminated, which was brought on by contracting syphilis twice because of his penchant for conquering women. He covered everything around him with paper towels and Kleenex, and wrote detailed instructions for his aides on how to do everything from scrubbing cans of food he was to eat, to handling everything with a barrier of Kleenex.

In his early adult years his eating habits were atrocious, which led to poor health, which led to chronic pain, which led to a drug addiction. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping private doctors for the sole purpose of supplying him with the drugs he was addicted to.