Youth and growing up. The midlife crisis of "Huckleberry Finn" ; Candide says relax. Then get to work ; "A separate peace" and the dream of best friends forever ; Owners of our lonely hearts ; How the uncaged bird sings -- Identity. Real Indians play rock 'n roll ; "The autobiography of Malcolm X" : yours and mine ; Edith Wharton : "'Innocence' is for wimps" ; The us yet to come ; Am I a man or an android? -- The inner and the outer world. If this "Library" is paradise-- ; Staying out of the "Bell jar" ; You may find yourself trapped in Alexander Portnoy's head-- ; "Cannery Row" : where everybody knows your name ; My favorite book of them all -- Love and pain. "Pride and prejudice" : Jane Austen for the clumsier sex ; Marriage counseling from Henrik Ibsen ; "Eyes" on love ; I've been young and afraid, Joyce Carol Oates. Thank you for asking ; "The scarlet letter" : I don't like it either -- Working. "Bartleby" in the breakroom ; The work/life balance of Sherlock Holmes ; Working at relaxing with David Foster Wallace ; At the office with "'Master Harold'-- and the boys" ; Burning books : one crappy job -- Family. Why "To kill a mockingbird" makes a great Father's Day gift ; The ambivalent family of Toni Morrison ; Of wontons, mah-jongg, and time ; A family of giant insects ; "Maus" : a comic book about fathers, sons, and genocide -- Ideas and learning. The renaissance nerds of "The phantom tollbooth" ; Camping it up with Susan Sontag ; 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' by Walter Benjamin, notes by Kevin Smokler ; Hello, I'm William Shakespeare ; "Understanding" Marshall McLuhan -- Violence and loss. Holden Caulfield, that little brat ; Albert Camus, the unsexy "Stranger" ; Shirley Jackson's rituals of violence ; The stone-faced trip of "Slaughterhouse-five" ; An act of violence, a book of forgiveness -- The shameless case of Walt Whitman ; Emily Dickinson's lessons for success ; Little heroes and "Locust" ; "Visit Tinker Creek." Then keep going ; How to tell a hero story -- Beware of revolutionaries who look like pigs ; Meet Thomas Pynchon, your driving companion ; The "Remains" of tomorrow ; Four different ways that "Things fall apart" ; A letter.