Read My Lips, Oprah--You Chose a Stinker!

Any more, one REM-inspired snort from Hobbes the Hobo Dog and I'm up for the day. Even when that day is hours away. Come 3 a.m., then, as Hobbes spastically and vocally was imagining fresh cat turds and frisky squirrels, I peeked through my lashes to try to interpret my clock's digital readout, Mark rumbling a bit himself across the tundra of our king-sized bed.

By 3:30, our fates were sealed. That's when our wayward son Eric wended his chilly way homeward on his bike, refusing the comfortable digs of a friend's basement floor in favor of his own bed. I can hardly blame him, even though I suppose it makes us bad parents to make a 3:30 a.m. arrival even an option to an 18-year-old son, but we pretty much get the lure of one's own beds, so we allow it to happen--occasionally.

We even managed to enjoy a brief conversation with Eric, followed by stupid giggles and a whispered exchange between Mark and me...all before 4 a.m.!

So what does a person do when 3:30 beckons the start of a new day? If your name is Mark Holt and you work the weekend shift, you decide to go in an hour early--leaving at 4:35 a.m.--so that Sunday dinner might start a bit earlier than usual. If your name is Jane Holt and you happen to have the best newspaper carrier west of the Mississippi, you hold out hope that, somehow, the sports writers managed to crank out their depressing Husker ink before 10 last night and the paper miraculously awaits you on your front step, its chilly, plastic condom promising nothing if not safe reading.

But even I knew I was asking a lot. So, instead, I reached down to the pile of books at my bedside, turned on my lamp, puffed up a few extra pillows, and figured I'd dig into my new read, Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom," described in the press as a classic, post-modern mystery of sorts.

Apparently, I'm no "Thoroughly Post-Modern Millie", because, by page 50, I was pretty much disgusted by every character in the book. Ironically, Franzen's latest had been chosen as an Oprah book, despite his snubbing of the media mogul when his "Corrections" came out a few years ago.

While Midas apparently had the golden touch, I find that, generally speaking, anything that's been deemed as an Oprah pick leaves me wanting. As in wanting something--anything--that even resembles redemption and a character I can care about.

Prior Oprah-pick books seemed to leave a bad taste in my mouth, and a kind of nasty film on my skin. Invariably, I had to follow each Oprah read with a white-hot, disinfecting bath, hoping to rid myself of all that ickiness and hopelessness. However, whereas many of the characters of her previous picks often seemed to languish in impoverished lives and general soullessness, this current pick features well-connected and fully-funded soulless characters.

And, I gotta tell you, I think I prefer bad-behaving poor people over bad-behaving rich folks any day. In the absence of three squares and a steady income, at least you can point to circumstances when trying to explain all that bad behavior and all those bad decisions. How, pray tell, am I supposed to care a whit, though, about imbeciles who've always had enough food, a good school, and a cozy, well-furnished house within which to reside?

And so, I toss aside Jonathan Franzen's latest, not willing to stomach its snarky self centeredness for another 500 pages, all in hopes of finding some reason to care. That's the power of pleasure reading. If there's no pleasure, I don't have to read it.