Ms. Dowd has a witty little column riffing on the New York journalist who bought his wife an A to Z list of books to help her understand him better (it was her birthday).

Here's her Valentine's list. Some excerpts:

I love Shakespeare, but if I put in "The Taming of the Shrew," would I send the wrong message?

Everything suddenly seemed fraught. What inferences would he draw from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"? Would he find me stuffy if I included "Ethan Frome"? Pretentious if I threw in Ovid? Mirthless if I chose the shame-spiraling "House of Mirth"? Hostile if I picked "Be Honest - You're Not That Into Him Either"?

High-maintenance if I selected "Empty Promises," Ann Rule's true stories of love affairs that ended with a horrible crime? Scheming if I put in Zsa Zsa Gabor's seminal treatise: "How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man"? Needy if I chose the Deepak Chopra cookbook to nourish body and soul, unlock the hidden dimensions in your life and harness the infinite power of coincidence? ...

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed not only risky, but the height of presumption to expect someone to devote that many hours to fathoming someone else's psyche. What guy would drag himself away from ESPN's "SportsCenter" to read "Sense and Sensibility" or from beer and pizza to devour "Cakes and Ale"?

SportsCenter I could largely do without, but giving up beer and pizza to read a book? Not on, I'm afraid. :)

As for me, you only need to read four books: Catch-22, by Joseph Heller; Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut; On The Road, by Jack Kerouac and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.