My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may -- need is the word I use -- to read FINNEGANS WAKE, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete TINTIN in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and BY LOVE POSSESSED. That 1957 best-seller by James Could Cozzens was eviscerated in a famous essay by Dwight Macdonald, who read all the way through that year's list of fiction best sellers and surfaced with a scowl. It and the other books on the list have been rendered obsolete, so that his essay is cruelly dated. But I remember reading the novel late, late into the night when I was 14, stirring restlessly with the desire to be by love possessed.

--Raise your hand if you want to go visit Roger Ebert's personal library now. As usual, he really gets at the heart of the issue.