This is not dedicated to A.J. Jacobs' wife

In The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, my new favorite author A.J. Jacobs fumes about Dante and Petrarch dedicating their works of art to married women they had loved from afar for years. "Stalkers," is the word A.J. uses.

I agree with him, although I am not sure The Inferno is really a love poem. I know nothing about romance, action or getting some, but if I were wooing a woman I would not say: "Hey, I just wrote a long poem about hell and its inhabitants and I dedicated it to you." I mean maybe that is the way to a Goth girl's heart, but how many many Goth girls am I likely to woo?

The bigger problem: I think I am in love with A.J.'s wife, Julie.

He makes her sound perfect for introverted, weird writers. She does stuff and brings him along, getting him out of the house, or at least tries.

What won me over to her completely is his story on page 163, where Julie wrote "Where's Julie?" at the appropriate point in the j's of the encyclopedia he is reading. I'm still not sure why, but this may be the coolest thing I have read. It made me all tingly.

I am not sure how she feels about wheelchairs and nasty disabilities, but I have faith in her.

I have just started A.J. Jacobs' next book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, and I am already getting bombarded with the coveting my neighbor's wife thing. Boy, is somebody nervous?