Reading the stars

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 9:01 AM

Posted by Sarah Payne, Book Search Support Team

My obsession of the moment is all things astrological. Case in point: I have both the Tarot.com gadget and the virtual fortune cookie gadget on my iGoogle homepage. It runs in the family: my mother, a teacher, swears that she can predict the mood of her fourth graders based on the moon. Since reading is also a family obsession, I thought I'd share with you my latest astrology-related finds in Book Search. My commuter book right now is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astrology. When I'm done with that, it's on to The Fated Sky, a book about the influence of astrology on historical figures and events.

You might be surprised to know that despite my keen interest in astrology, I've never been to a fortune teller. Why? In Oedipus Rex, an oracle foretells a famously tragic event: Oedipus will murder his father and marry his mother. Of course, it ends up happening as a result of the attempts to avoid it. I don't want to go there.

It turns out, however, that not all fortune-telling is seriously spooky. At a recent trip to an arcade, I was brave enough to try the "Let me tell you the future" machine (like the "Zoltar Speaks" machine in the movie Big). I won't bore you with the whole fortune, but it ended with, "You have fine taste in clothes, and this will cause many people to envy you." Hey, I'll take it.