September's Book of the Month

I love books. They're fun, educational, and they keep TV humble.

As a birthday gift, my brother and his girlfriend gave me a six-month subscription to Netflix. Is it a bit much for someone with my viewing habits, like giving one of those fat babies on The Maury Povich Show a wheelbarrow full of bacon?

Hell, no.

I can always watch more movies, and I always feel like I'm behind. There are directors whose work I know nothing about, classics I've missed. I'm insatiable that way, and basic cable and free movies on demand don't scratch that itch. Access to innumerable movie titles on someone else's dime does.

The first title to arrive in the happy, fire-engine red envelope was Disc 1 of Tales of the City. I had missed it during its initial run on PBS in 1994 because, well, I was busy memorizing textbooks and thinking that pushing my GPA past 3.9 would guarantee me success forever more.

Those were lost years, my friends, lost years.

Anyway, my interest in the miniseries escalated after I read the first two books in Armistead Maupin's series about gay and straight singles living in 1970s San Francisco. And that leads us to September's "Book(s) of the Month"--Tales of the City and More Tales of the City. (I haven't read the other books in the series, but I will.) They're like fun, smart literate soap operas that you can devour in a few days. I love books like that. You get entertained without feeling stupid.

Get to a library, jerks.