In the Mindstretch section of READ Magazine--Issue 3, we started a joke that goes a little something like this:

Three men are stranded on an island. They find a genie living in a conch shell. He grants each of them one wish. The first man says, "I want to go home." POOF! He is gone. The second man says, "I want to go home." POOF! He is gone. The third man looks around and says ...

What does he say?!? Well, the original punchline was that the third man says, "Gee I miss my friends. I wish they were here." Ba dum chhhh.

Well, that was pretty corny. The following punchlines are much better and they come straight from you, our READers!

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection was released yesterday. I'm not going to buy it. I would (even though the price is just shy of $100), but I already have all the comic books so buying this new set would merely be an act of reckless spending. But oh how I want it.

OH!

I walked into my favorite little bookstore yesterday (in Mystic, Conn.), and instantly got that old familiar feeling. That “kid-in-a-candy store” feeling. That “Christmas morning” feeling. The tingly anticipation of treasure to be discovered.

We often have moments where big questions about life and the way the world operates cross our mind. I know, I do. But what do we really do with those questions? File them in the back of our minds--or put them on the back burner? Well, I do (most of the time!). That's why I like Malcolm Gladwell - he takes those questions and goes out looking for answers.

Writer, hipster, and intellectural, Gladwell, 42, has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1996, but most of us didn't know about him until his bestselling book "The Tipping Point" hit the stands. It asks the simple yet probing question: What makes some ideas stick and spread like wildfire while other ideas fall flat on their face?

Last Saturday, I had a chance to go hear Gladwell speak at the New Yorker Festival. It was amazing.