Because by reading a book that is tough, you have an opportunity to grow. I don’t think anyone could argue against such good advice, but most of us have the obvious problem of not knowing which of the books we can identify as over our heads is worthwhile. Scads of folks praise Proust, for example, (sacred cow-tipping alert) but should I give a rat’s rearend about the man’s writing? Couldn’t I just read a couple essays on him and then work to read something better?

Actually, Proust is a bad author to question. The latest Booker winner would be a far better choice.

Academic literary studies apparently has little to do with the world in which living readers live. Bruce Fleming says, “It’s, well, academic, about syllabi and hiring decisions, how works relate to each other, and how the author is oppressing whomever through the work.”

Of course, it’s a posed shot, but I like Wayne’s style in the first photo he posts from Disney World. The shots of Pooh count as reading material too. Pooh is the man.

There’s a bit of truth in the thick of this self-loving opinion by a Guardian’s book blogger. “Because by choosing to write books, as opposed to becoming talk show hosts, or country singers, Palin and Wurzelbacher are tacitly endorsing two of the things that Blue America loves the most, and which Red America has often disdained: freedom of expression and reading.”

Sure. I’m a Republican, and I never read or write. I don’t give a rat’s rear-end about those things. I’d much rather picket my local learning establishment or fish in the river I polluted.

Thomas Sowell writes, “Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are ‘interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity,’ people who “read the classics.’

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.”

Sens. McCain and Obama list their favorite books and San Francisco authors comment.

How stories do their work on us: “Real life doesn’t always feel like a great adventure. Sometimes doing the right thing is rather dull. Great adventure stories remind us that in the end, the choices we make every day are the stuff of greatness. The world is changed by people who choose to tell the truth, to show kindness, to be courageous.”