Some of you give me books that you would like me to read, which I am very happy to do. It usually takes me some time to get to them, so sometimes I save them to take on planes with me. If it is near the summertime, I save them to take with me on my summer vacation.

Sometimes, I am embarrassed to confess, by the time I get around to reading the book, I can't remember who it was who gave it to me. That has happened with enough frequency lately that I have thought of putting a table out on the patio, pile all these books on top, and put up a sign up that says, "Come and get them." But since the number of books I can't return roughly equals the number of books that have never been returned to me, I figured there was some sort of natural law at work here, some invisible hand that was meting ou…