"Larry the Cable Guy" has written his first book, titled after his popular catchphrase, Git-R-Done! It's so dirty I can't review it -- not properly, anyway. I never realized how perverse Larry is. I've seen the Blue Collar Comedy Tour movie and watched his Tonight Show appearances. Either he cleans it up a whole lot for the visual media or I just wasn't paying that much attention. The book started well enough. I was laughing all over the place, so much so that I called my mother to ...

As research for an upcoming article, I'm reading Leonard Wolf's The Annotated Dracula. It's a facsimile of the first edition of BramStoker's classic novel with copious sidebar notations. (Highlyrecommended, by the way.) I like to read the notes for the upcoming chapter, then go backand read the novel's text. I realized while doing so that this simulates having knowledge I lack. During everyday reading,when we come upon a reference or allusion, our brains fill in theknowledge, thereby adding...