The Book-Stuffing Spectrum

I wonder if Henry Alford ever worked in a public library.

He just published an essay titled "You Never Know What You'll Find in a Book" (The NYTBR, 12/21/08).

The comedian Jean Villepique, who played Tracy Morgan's therapist on "30 Rock," says she likes to slam insects between the pages of library books and then return the corpse-laden tomes. "I like to think that someone will get to page 62 and think, 'Eww!' and then, 'Who?'" Villepique said in an email message.

She preys only on small bugs that land on the page voluntarily--mostly gnats ("like a little dust poof") and mosquitoes, whether unfed ("neat and dry") or bloody ("page joiners"). But Villepique warns that if any cockroach in her Los Angeles apartment "dares to creep near my copy of 'Collapse,' by Jared Diamond, I will kill, knowing that my behavior and the roach's existence are both causes of the collapse of our society."

Okay: eww.