Well, happy new year to you!

    You know, I feel I've been gone so long that I could hardly remember my password to the blog!
     How's your new year going?  If it's going like mine, it's already fast and furious.  The faster I try to go, the behinder I get.  There's been so much for all of us to do this first week back at work.  But you know what?  We're sure glad to be back.
     I did a lot of reading while I was off work.  And friends gave me a few books also.  In fact, one of them I want to tell you about. 
     It's called "50 Things to Do with a Book. (Now That Reading Is Dead)."  Isn't that a great title?  It's by Bruce McCall with a copyright of 2009.  Of course, it says right in the front of the book "No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews."  So, consider this a "review," but it's not necessarily critical.
     This little book, only about a 100 pages, will give you ideas what to do with all the books you happen to have if you're not going to read them.
     For instance, McCall says you can cut a circular baseball-sized hole in the center of a thick book, add two to four catgut strings across the hole and make a bookjo!  (Take off on banjo.)  Just imagine, you could have your own bookjo band.
     How about this?  Pull the spine of a fat book apart so that you have two or three hundred loose pages.  Throw the pages in the air, then reassemble the book without looking at the page numbers.  You could create a whole new literary work and possibly win a prize in some contest.
     There are lots of things McCall suggests you can build.  Such as...gluing 50 identical copies of the same thinnish hardcover book to a wall as a decoration; pile up unwanted or damaged books to build your own personal stairway to paradise; build your own individual "Bookhenge" in your backyard using stacks of books; or stack books side to side across a wide open landscape and make your own miniature Great Wall of China.
     You could fling a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" at a mouthy little bird.  How about setting up a whole line of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" books across the top of a bookcase and creating a domino effect as the books fall into a heap on the floor?
     Well, you get the idea.  This is a clever and funny little book.  It won't take you long to read it and will help make your 2011 a little more laughable as you struggle to get your act together here in the first month of the year.
     McCall has written and illustrated satire in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other major publications.  He has published two books of humor, as well as a memoir.  And he's published a children's book, Marveltown.  "50 Things..." is published by HarperCollins and is considered a book of humor.