Ill never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious. Seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
so it wasnt hard to bear, the day...I read a book.
- Jimmy Durante
Who better to set the tone for our special issue on books than a 1950s-era singer who, unlike celebrities today, sang fully clothed. (Jimmy Durantes schnoz was bad enough, so you gotta figure the audience had absolutely no interest in seeing his navel.) Of course, if youve never heard of Jimmy Durante then youre obviously too young to have experienced classic American music, or the other joys we older people take for granted, such as shaving our ears.
But before I lapse completely into missing the good old days (which were before my time), lets focus on the main topic at hand: books, and the fact that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you cant avoid reading them.
If youre like me, you get most of your information from supermarket tabloids or comic books, the kind where heavily-muscled figures, speaking cryptically in word balloons, solve the worlds problems the only way they can: with righteous anger and vigilante justice. (What do you expect from people who survived, say, a freak laboratory accident that left them with super-human strength and, in the case of Lizard Man, a really bad skin condition? They get cranky.)
Occasionally, however, I have ventured somewhat deeper into the realms of literature, enough to have some clear favorites.
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