t’s the weekend of July 4th and we’re out at the beach. The wife and I are rounding off her three-mile daily walk (and, frankly, sweating our glands out through our pores). And while I’m trying to distract myself from the salty sting in my eyes, I’m noticing all the beach books cracked open.

That’s cool. Everyone likes a beach book. It’s one of the icons of Me-ism, just sitting in a chair on the sands, enjoying a low-IQ kettle-boiler. In fact, many reviewers (myself included, I believe) have reviewed a fun books as a great “beach book”. Yeah, all that super-spy, bodice-ripping fun.

But I find myself asking – why do you need eight miles of sand, millions of gallons of agitated brine and a blazing sun to enjoy this simple pleasure?

I’ve taken to always carrying a book with me. Never know when I’ll have to wait five minutes for a fellow diner to show up. And when I jog at lunch, after I shower and get something at the cafe downstairs, there is always time to toss my feet onto the work desk and enjoy a page or two of whatever drama I’m chewing through. I do notice, when I go out to lunch, that a lot of business-lunchtime conversations are projectile vomits of the latest office tussle, all the melodrama with poorly-staged mimicry of the antagonist.

Why would you do that to yourself? Why sit across from someone who is just going to spit bile (and provoke it out of you)? Why not go to lunch with a person paid to provide entertainment (rather than the office-bound amateur you find yourself saddled with)? Why not bring a book?

Trouble sleeping at night? Close out your day with fifteen minutes of you-time, reading the next few pages of your penny-dreadful. Having trouble keeping track of what’s happening? Well, before you close it at night, write on the top margin “Ahab goes on about whales and vengeance” or whatever. That way, when you open it on tomorrow’s bedtime, you’ll remember exactly what’s going on.

Really, books are qualified, trained entertainers. Don’t leave it to sniveling amateurs. Get a professionally produced book today!

Which leads, naturally, to…

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