[a fool in paradise]

I don't read much for fiction (occasionally some obscure bizarre mysteries from the 1920s/30s) but I do have copies of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm to read (really more allegorical editorializing than strict fiction).

I tend to read more autobiography (often fictionalized too) or historical/research.

[Revolting cat!]

Check out Kent Wascom’s “The Blood of Heaven” - historical fiction at its best.

[Revolting cat!]

I used to work with this guy who was a college dropout, highly intelligent, well read, and very insecure. He was much better read in English literature than I could ever hope to be (maybe his major was English, I dunno.) Then he met this woman at work who was working on a Ph.D in, what else, social studies. She captured him, he fell in with her crowd, and I saw him reading popular books, not Danielle Steel, but one level above that. I asked him about it, and he explained what I should have always understood but never had: he read it to have something to talk about with the people he was running with. Well, D’UH, Homer, you’ve stumbled on the secret to happy life!