“Time Enough at Last.”

The new year reminds me of that classic “Twilight Zone” episode starring Burgess Meredith as a put-upon bookworm.

(No, he wasn’t reading on the wing of an airplane! Get your episodes straight, with “The Twilight Zone Companion,” for Pete’s sake!)

True bibliophiles are all the same. Whether our preference is studying the rise and fall of empires or the rise and fall of heaving bosoms, we eagerly anticipate how many volumes we can absorb in the pristine, wide-open next 12 months.

The lucky few exceed their wildest expectations. The rest of us find one ob...