FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT

A story about Yann Martel's quixotic attempt to get his Prime Minister reading opens with this very amusing anecdote:

A late friend -- God rest his cynical soul -- once doubted that the literary novels he was loaning to his new love interest were actually being read. So our friend discreetly taped a few pages together in the middle of the next book that had been eagerly requested -- The Folding Star, by Alan Hollinghurst, as I recall -- and loaned it to his lover du jour. A week later, the...