Bedside Reading

The stack of books on my bedside table is now approaching critical mass. See, I reserve certain books for bed reading. Not the stuff I take with me every day on the subway or read while lounging on the couch; no, my bed reading is the stuff that requires concentration, that I can't get into on a crowded subway car, or on the couch with the television on. I'm talking about heavy-duty reading, the meaty stuff. Of course, since I'm usually exhausted by the time I get to bed, the books on this pile can tend to reside there for a while.

The bedside stack currently consists of:

Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, by Eric Meyer
Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, by Byian Talbot
The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing, by Norman Mailer, autographed
My grandfather's ancient copy of A Treasury of the Familiar, by Ralph L. Woods

And I recently added one of my personal favorites, You Can't Win, to the stack. A stark memoir of bum-turned-town-librarian Jack Black's travels across America at the tail end of the 19th century, it reads as hard and cold as a straight razor, and cuts just as deep. It's a great late-night book, and I got a hankering to pick it up again after seeing a 1978 performance by Tom Waits on Austin City Limits, a program I'd stupidly forgotten until I stumbled across it again on late night television last weekend.

Speaking of late-night television, why did no one tell me that Michael Paré is now an interstellar bounty hunter?

And speaking of Michael Paré...I guess I can understand why you might need to get your obsessive love for him off your chest, but, c'mon, people: don't you think you might be scaring him just a bit with your site?