Books did not need to be beautiful back in the Fifties, because nothing else was beautiful back then. Books were simply there: you read them because they were diverting or illuminating or in some way useful but not because the books themselves were aesthetically appealing.

On this side of the Atlantic, the arrival of a new Woody Allen movie is always greeted with tremors of bliss by filmgoers past the age of 60, with mild curiosity by those in their 50s, with trepidation by those in their 40s, with fear and loathing by those in their 30s, and with complete indifference by anyone younger. An icon to baby boomers, who will never concede that when something is over, it is really over (Clapton, McCartney, Santana, the 1960s), Allen has not made a truly memorable film since Bullets On Broadway back in 1994.

It was once argued that 'Starring Sylvester Stallone' were the three scariest words in the English language but until I saw Adam Sandler I'd always thought the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.'

Purists maintain that if you go to a baseball game you will almost always see something you have never seen before. Unfortunately, it usually takes place in the stands.

Martin Scorcese is probably America's greatest living director, and while he is not a titan like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Federico Fellini, he is certainly consistently more interesting than Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. Even a failure like Gangs of New York or a curiosity like The Aviator is more interesting and ambitious than Munich, The Black Dahlia or Scoop.

A friend once told me that the real message Bram Stoker sought to convey in 'Dracula' is that a human being needs to live hundreds and hundreds of years to get all his reading done; that Count Dracula, basically nothing more than a misunderstood bookworm, was draining blood from the necks of 10,000 hapless virgins not because he was the apotheosis of pure evil but because it was the only way he could live long enough to polish off his extensive reading list. But I have no way of knowing if this is true, as I have not yet found time to read 'Dracula.

The world is changing, but I am not changing with it. There is no e-reader or Kindle in my future. My philosophy is simple: Certain things are perfect the way they are. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublimely visceral, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery systemBooks that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. Books that make us believe, for however short a time, that we shall all live happily ever after.