Read all of my old Calvin & Hobbes anthologies this week.

Let's face it, all through high school and into college I was a literature snob. Literature with a capital L. I read my share of airport novels, Crichton and Grisham and Clancy and this ungodly high-concept piece of crap called Spares — but I read more than my share of stuffy classics.

A lot of it was sentimental garbage. Well-written pap, but pap nonetheless. Why do critics shun the popular fiction of today only to praise yesterday's hacks?

Well, that's not fair. But so help me god, James Fenimore Cooper is a hack. Twain knew it, I know it, dogs know it…

I read his The Spy without prompting. I tried reading The Last of the Mohicans but couldn't stomach it. Plus it was an old book, and some pages fell out while we were learning about ghosts and demons in church. Don't read during confirmation class, kids.

And I read an unhealthy amount of Dickens, which I'm pretty sure had a hand in making me a romantic for a while. We've all heard that story before, though.

There was also Wuthering Heights, which I don't remember a word of. And D.H. Lawrence. I underlined stuff in D.H. Lawrence. Only connect.

On the plus side, I suspect that my (sentimental) notion that anything written better than the bible had to be divinely inspired contributed to my eventual disillusionment with religion.

I'd like to think I have good taste now. If I'm elected grad school student in April, I promise to use my English skills to defend what I think is good, instead of just what the diversity-mongers tell me is good.

But I had good taste before high school. I read some great fantasy and sci-fi books, all the stuff you'd expect a nerdy kid to be reading.

And before that I read Calvin & Hobbes, probably the greatest comic ever written. We need another Bill Watterson.