, Columnist
Must-Reads of 2017: Al Franken's Comedy Turns Tragic
The words look the same. The meanings have changed.
The best-selling author.
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Books are still oddly built to last. In an age of tweets and other ephemera, they’re the third little piggy’s brick-and-mortar house, withstanding the gale-force winds of a digital wolf that has already wrecked whole neighborhoods built of less sturdy stuff.
Yet even when the frame endures – the glossy cover, the laudatory blurbs, the author’s face, smiling or serious, beckoning the reader to come hither – a book’s insides can be blown to smithereens.