How to get me to buy a book

It's so easy: just begin your New York Times Sunday Book Review piece like this: "The Germans must have a term for it. Doppelgedanken, perhaps: the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances you wonder, 'How could the author have known what I was thinking?' Of course, what has happened isn’t this at all, though it’s no less astonishing. Rather, you’ve been drawn so deftly into another world that you’re breathing with someone else’s rhythms, seeing someone else’s visions as your own."

That's what Leah Hager Cohen did in her appreciation of Alice Munro's latest collection of stories, "Too Much Happiness," in the November 29, 2009 issue.

Here's how illiterate I am: this will be the first book of Munro's I've ever purchased or read.

But you know what?

I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Why?

Because my credo is, "No shame + no pride = no limits."

You can go a significant part of the way toward being pretty much OK with yourself if you can manage to internalize that.

Though it's easier said than done.

Trust me — and those I know who've tried but in the end are simply too embarrassed to proceed.