Oh, I'm reading alright. By the time I read the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Time, the Rocky Mountain News, Mudcat, etc, I barely have time to get through Dickens, Balzac, and Thomas Freakin Hardy! And as for Classics Illustrated, it beat the hell out of Cliff's Notes from a visual standpoint, when it came to completing a book report on Frankenstein that was due the next morning.

And don't even mention Shakespeare. The guy could never just say "the horse farted." It would be something like "oh steed that does't sometime give forth with noble neigh, why now from they nether quarters must thou bray?" I mean, that stuff was fine for Henry VIII. In fact, whatever time Henry spent trying to figure out what the hell Shakespeare was getting at, was time spent not executing his wives or spreading the pox among his serving wenches.

Now Eric Seagal, there was an author. What was Love Story, 94 pages? And if Eric could get falling in love, getting married, the girl dying, and the guy coming to a greater realization in 94 pages, why the heck Tolstoy couldn't cram Napoleon's invasion of Russia into 140 or so is inconceivable to me.