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[This is a continuation of a particular format of blog posts. The first three essays are here, here and here . One is about comedy, one is about my home city of Toronto, and the third is about, um, cats. There’s a fourth, but it’s terrible and I don’t want you to read it.]

1. Books, huh? You’d think this would be fertile ground, given that books are made up of words, but after yesterday’s horror show, I’m not too optimistic. Let’s see where this goes, shall we?

2. I read a lot. Like, A LOT. It’s something that Holly and I have in common. We have three bookcases that are full to the point of overflowing. I think if we both had nothing in our apartment but books, paper and pencils, we’d be happy enough. I try to make a point of reading every day, and I’m a pretty fast reader. 

2a. One of the first things I did to try and sneakily work out if Holly liked me before we started dating was to give her a book as a gift. It was a two part test. First, it was one of my favourite books, Fight Club. If she liked it, then my suspicions of her fantastic taste would be confirmed. Secondly, I jokingly wrote in the inside cover that I expected a book report by the end of the month. When she actually wrote one, I knew I had a keeper on my hands. The opening paragraph:

I AM a beautiful and unique snowflake. 
That being said, I still think Chuck Palahniuk is a little bit genius. 
This is a book report for Fight Club.
For Jon.

I didn’t stand a chance.

2b. It occurs to me that I often write about how great Holly is. That must get pretty old for anyone else reading this. It’s not a conscious choice that I make. She is pretty awesome, though.

3. Fight Club is a really fantastic novel. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you think that seeing the movie is enough, then you’re wrong. There’s nuances to the story that the movie has to skim over. There’s the skill and complexity in the writing that you can only really appreciate in the novel. For what it’s worth, I’ve got a copy of the screenplay and I’ve read it more than once. Chuck Palahnuik remains to this day one of my favourite writers. Choke is a fantastic novel. Invisible Monsters is awesome, too. Diary creeps me out.

3a. I still don’t know how to pronounce his surname. I wonder if his mother calls him Charles.

3b. Charles Palahnuik is nowhere near as cool as Chuck, which is weird. 

4. Chuck Klosterman is another one of my favourite writers. His essays have a clarity of vision and a forthright opinion running through them that I can only dream of. Whenever I write anything, I’m constantly watering down any kind of opinion, simply because I’m convinced that I’m wrong 90% of the time. This is probably a mistake, since people like writers with strong opinions. Or at least I think they do, I’m not sure.

4a. See what I did there?

4b. This numbered structure that I’ve been using in these essays has been stolen from his book Eating the Dinosaur. It’s a great book and you should read it as soon as you can.

4c. It’s strange that two of my favourite authors are called Chuck, especially given how rare that first name is. I’ve never met a Chuck.

5. In case it hasn’t been made clear previously, I’m a massive nerd. Case in point: I have bookmarks that I’ve bought from Chapters which have a space for you to write in the name of the book, the date you started it, the date you finished, and any notes you have about good/bad/interesting it is. I love them more than is healthy. I religiously fill in a bookmark for each book I read. It makes me sad that I only found these in January.

5a. I love that I can keep track of how many books I read, because my memory is really terrible. I’m aiming to read 52 books this year - one a week. I’m reading at a slightly slower rate than that at the moment.

6. I favour non-fiction over fiction to a 3:1 ratio. I’m not a big fan of biographies, even though I’ve read two since January (My Shit Life So Far and American on Purpose, both books about Scottish standup comics. American on Purpose is by far the better book, but both are enjoyable. AoP is in my running for book of 2011. According to my bookmark, I read it in two days.)

7. I always have a ton of books to read at any given time, and yet I always buy more books (usually 4 or 5 a month). This behaviour is illogical. There are some books that I’ve had for months and haven’t touched, despite my really wanting to read them (Oh, hello, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid!). I do this with DVDs, too, but on a much smaller scale. I bought the complete boxed set of Arrested Development back in January, and I haven’t watched it yet.

8. I’ve wanted to write a book for as long as I’ve been writing. The closest I’ve come is when I wrote about 15,000 words in 2005ish. A few people have read it and liked it. I went back to it recently and was horrified and embarrassed that I actually gave it to other human beings that were capable of reading. Wow, was I ever self indulgent when I was 23.

8a. I’m aware that writing a blog post called “What I Think About…” is hardly showing a lack of self indulgence. Personal growth remains one of my weak points.

9. I very rarely decide to give up on a book. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve stopped half way through and just not finished it. I think the last was Three Sheets to the Wind, but that wasn’t because I hated it - I just had a bunch of awesome other books to read and I forgot about it.

10. At the moment I’m reading Show Me the Funny by Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis. It’s good. In fact, I might just go and read some more of it now.

11. Time to race to my conclusion: reading is great. You all should do it, as often as possible. In my youth it was a form of escapism (I spent a lot of my teenage years hiding in the library, because bullies don’t generally go places that make them smarter) and today it is greatest source of inspiration and education that I have. I want to write because I love reading. This applies to every ambition I have.

11a. I urge you: go buy a book. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘good’ book - every single novel ever written has value. My favourite books as a teenager were written by John Grisham. He’s as far from critically acclaimed as you can get, but I loved his books. Then write a book report. Figure out if you like the book, and then try to work out why you like it. In doing that, you’ll learn more about the world, and just as importantly, learn more about yourself.