deborahmarkus7

There. I added the much-needed "rereading" shelf to my options. If I were a true nerd, I'd have "re-rereading" and "re-re-rereading" shelves; but I've never been one of those people who knows exactly how many times I've read a book. When it comes to keeping track of that kind of thing, I'm like one of those cultures who only have the numerical concepts of "one," "two," and "many." I know if I've only read a book once, and I generally remember if I've read it twice. After that, it falls into the "many" memory bin.

This is a "many" book for me. I love Dave Barry, and my son's reading him a lot now. So I'm rereading this collection in a haphazard fashion -- five minutes here and there. Five minutes can get you pretty far in a Dave Barry book.

What sets this collection apart is that Barry wrote it after he retired from writing his regular newspaper column, so the essays are very long. He can relax and enjoy himself without having to worry about word-count.

I like the fact that Barry is obviously a dog person (he's been writing about his dogs for decades now), yet has no illusions about dogs:

A dog is a companion that, if you feed it and pet it and pretend that you sincerely want to take away its ball, will give you, in return, totally unqualified love. You could be Charles Manson, or Hitler, or even a lawyer who advertises on television, and your dog will still think you're the greatest thing ever. This tells you something very important about dogs: They are not very bright.

On the other hand, this collection is to blame for the fact that I've read two of the Twilight books. Barry wrote a parody so hilariously awful that I had to see just how bad they were. Bad enough that I couldn't make it through the third one, is the answer. But I'll never have that time back again.

UPDATE, 10/16/14: Just reread this via Audible recording. Dave Barry reads his own work, and he's very good at it.