there's a life lesson in here somewhere

today I finished another book. It's Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert and I already wrote a review for it over here (what? didn't know I had this website? surprise!). Anyway, this book has been consuming my extra time and thought process for the last week or so. Lately, I have been reading prefaces and acknowledgments more often than not. When I was in high school my favorite part of reading new books was learning about the new author first (maybe not the extensive note-taking part though). It seemed to me that you could understand, or at least appreciate a book more when you know where the author is coming from. Once I got to college and we no longer had reading classes I missed this. I think that's where the prefaces and acknowledgments passion stems from.
All this to say that as I was reading the end of Committed I read Elizabeth's note to her sister Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of the Dairy Queen series that I came to love only a month ago! I was so surprised! I knew the author of Dairy Queen's name was Catherine. I knew Elizabeth's last name was Gilbert. I knew she had a sister named Catherine because she references her several times in Committed. Never made the connection. I love finding family connections; it's a secret (or not so secret now) pleasure of mine. I just like to see how other family's live, how they're similar or different, even how all their names sound together. Weird, I know.
It just got me thinking, what can we learn when we take the time to read until the very last page?