“Here’s a novel idea: read more fiction,” blared the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article by Gerard Baker.

(The less said about that other Journal headline, “Here’s a limerick idea: buy a timeshare in Nantucket,” the better.)

Baker gruffly lamented the digital age and society’s abhorrence of reading books in general, but he laid a particularly strong guilt trip on the males who do still read for gravitating toward nonfiction (history, biographies, self-help, The Big Book of Just A Couple of Beers, Officer Explanations, etcetera) instead of novels or short stories.

I must plead guilty as charged, regarding Baker’s accusation. (Don’t worry, folks: one of the self-help books I read was “5 Easy Steps to Disarming Your Ankle Monitor.”) Although I enjoyed the works of Nathaniel Ha

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