Opening paragraphs..................................

Let me begin on the back foot and linger there for awhile.

This book is entitled The Year of Reading Dangerously.  It is the true story of the year I spent reading some of the greatest and most famous books in the world, and two by Dan Brown.  I am proud of what I achieved in that year and how the experience changed my life - really altered its course - which is why I am about to spend several hundred pages telling you about it.  However, the book you are holding has not always been called The Year of Reading Dangerously.  I started out with that title but then had second thoughts.  For a while The Miller's Tales seemed like it might work.  After that, I briefly considered Up! From Sloth, then The Body in the Library.  Other possibilities included Hunting Paper Tigers, Real Men Don't Read Books, Memoirs of a Born-again Pessimist, Croydon Till I Die, and Bast Unbound.  For about five minutes, it was called Outliars.  Then there was Against Nature II: Resurrection, which was followed by What Are You Staring At?, which in turn gave way to We Don't Need To Talk About We Need To Talk About Kevin (To Have a Good Time).  After one particularly difficult morning, I amended the title page to F**k the World, I Want to Get Off.  Finally, however, that first thought prevailed and I turned back to The Year of Reading Dangerously, or to give it its full title, The Year of Reading Dangerously and Five Years of Living with the Consequences.

-Andy Miller,  The Year of Reading Dangerously:  How Fifty Great Books (And Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life