A GOOD JOB.(the bible as leisure reading)

EARLY EACH DECEMBER, the book pages offer us fat sheaves of short paragraphs, setting out the self-written accounts of who read what books during the year just passing. This quaint indulgence of the literati does no conceivable harm, but does it do any good?

To a woman and to a man, literary editors lament the limitations of their "lack of space". Thus each week and month they excuse their failures even to mention significant numbers of good new books, all of which accordingly are condemned to fall "dead born from the press", the fate (as all of us know) of one of the noblest books ever written in our language.

One asks: Is this splurge of end-of-year snippets worth the precious space they occupy? Surely we would all be more rewarded by three or four proper, full-blooded book reviews instead?

And one again asks: Isn't it misspent creative effort for authors (as most of the contributors are) to fret their souls in the writing of such fragments of resounding inconsequentiality? Wouldn't they have been better occupied in getting ahead with the manuscript of their next great book? Don't let anyone underestimate the time, the trouble and the awkward moral problems of their little annual jeux d'esprit--a mere hundred or so words each though they may be.

They allow you no room to say anything even remotely of value or interest, yet you must rack your brain for the titles of books (if any) which you read in the twelvemonth; you must struggle after what details (if any) you can recall.

Above all, you must strive not to disoblige those off-stage figures, unsuspected by the ordinary reader:

* the literary editor who invites you to contribute your end-of-year ten cents' worth. Don't offend in that quarter--your own next book may be out for review six months from now.