The Coolest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes

This is a short, quick, and easy read. Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK (humor is hard!), but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends. Anecdotes are retold in my own words to avoid plagiarism. Most of these anecdotes are meant to be funny, but some are meant to be thought-provoking. This book contains 250 anecdotes, including this one: • David Foster Wallace's mother was an English teacher at a community college. She had an interesting way of teaching David and Amy, his sister, proper grammar. If either of them made an error in usage during conversation at the supper table, she would pretend to have a coughing fit until the child acknowledged his or her error and corrected it. • Philip Pullman, author of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, is a wonderful storyteller—not just when he writes his novels, but also when he tells out loud the stories of classic literature. For example, when he and his family were on vacation, Tom, his young son, found it difficult to stay still while they waited for their food in a restaurant. Therefore, Mr. Pullman started telling him the story of Odysseus, hero of Homer's "Odyssey," who spent 10 years at Troy in the Trojan War, and who spent another 10 years returning back home to his home island, Ithaca. Although Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, he returned home without any of his men or ships. Ever cautious, he disguised himself as a beggar, and then he set out to see if he had any friends left on the island. He found that a gang of young men who thought he was dead had overtaken his palace. They wanted to kill his son and to force his wife, Penelope, to choose one of them to marry. Eventually, Mr. Pullman reached the point in the story where Odysseus gets his great bow in his hands and strings the bow. After stringing the bow, he plucks the string on the bow just like a harp player plucks a string on a harp. Immediately, the suitors besieging Penelope feel dread because they know that Odysseus is going to try to kill all of them. At this point, Tom, who was holding a drink in his hands, was so excited that he bit a chunk out of his glass. Their waitress saw him do that, and she was so shocked that she dropped the tray with all their food on the floor. Mr. Pullman ends his story by writing, "And I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Homer."