Now, snobs of the highest literary order (of which I believe I am one) will typically tell you there there's no true good book since the term "good" is an empty term spent by relativists. And those who watch all five of the Fast and Furious movies in a marathon sitting.
My nose in the air hasn't quite reached such heights. Give me an hour or two, and I'll work on it. Yet, I do believe in a good-old-fashioned good book. (See? I just used the dry little noun accessory twice. Twice!)
While I'll admit to believing in the implausible term (I also bought tickets for the Loch Ness and Bigfoot Belief Trains, mind you), I confess I haven't the foggiest notion as to how to define it. I mean, what makes a book, in fact, good?
If history - my mere 17 years of adulthood being all I've got to mortgage here - has shown me anything, it's that preference is everything. How else could we explain the greatest debates of our history? Consider good versus evil. Science or nature. TP: Under or Over?
Book boasting is no crayon of a different box. Of course, that won't stop me from dropping a diarrhetic in your soup if you dare claim Jane Austen is just another empty-minded Victorian who cottons to flights of romantic whimsy. That's right. I said diarrhetic.
For me, The Good Book better refer to The Bible or else be that needle-in-the-haystack find of crackerjack wit and content that titivates my brain while tickling m'funny bone. No short order of pancakes that.
And it should be a bit zany. Off the wall. Original without trying to be. For instance: let's say there was some guy. We'll call him A.J. Jacobs. And let's say Jacobs, although Ivy League (cough-cough, Brown University) educated, feels by the ragged age of 35 that he's "slipping in a slow slide of dumbness". Let's mix in that, to stave the steep of said slide, he decides to read the entire 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica in a humble quest to become the world's smartest man. Oh, but we mustn't fail to add that he writes about the adventure...one alphabetized musing at a time. Now what sort of book would that make?
A freakin' hysterical one, that's what.
It just so happens that it also titivates the brain while tickling the funny bone. Must make it good, then.
Want the full course and not just some lame appetizer? Okay, have another bite.
"Glyndwr: A district in Wales. Please buy a vowel."
"dance: In a tribe of Santa Maria, old men used to stand by with bows and arrows and shoot every dancer who made a mistake. The perfect way to raise the stakes on American Idol."
"Absalom: a biblical hero, [who] has the oddest death so far in the encyclopedia. During a battle in the forest, Absalom got his flowing hair caught in the branches of an oak tree, which allowed his enemy, Joab, to catch him and slay him. This, I figure, is exactly why the army requires crew cuts."
"Mann, Horace: In his final speech, the educational reformer told students: 'Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.' Good wisdom. I have to remember that."
Told you it was titivating.
Go read it.
It's good.
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