The Roving I: Collected columns, wit, wisdom, and self-exposure of Woody Weingarten

The Roving I, with wit and wordplay, can spark laughter and tears

You'll surely relate to this page-turner if:

• You enjoy heart-warming stories that tend to stir your emotions.
• You like to read about families with problems like yours-or different ones-and their solutions.
• You're apt to smile as the anthologist recalls when his partner earned a slot in his Little Black Book.
• You can marvel at a woman carrying her sister's "miracle baby" inside her for nine months.
• You'd relish hearing how happy a once wild pet duck makes residents of an assisted living facility.
• You'd find it amusing that Robin Williams transformed himself into a talking vagina.

The Roving I is aimed at readers who believe they can mine gold from Woody Weingarten's 70 favorite columns.

That faith will be rewarded. This prize-winning writer/editor has crafted and played with words for more than 60 years. He's worked for dailies and weeklies on both coasts, co-written a musical revue with his wife, led a support group for men, and served on local and regional commissions. He authored Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer and, with his granddaughter, a kids' fantasy, Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates.

Be jubilant! This literary anthology can help you learn:

• How a photographer turned his Parkinson's disease into an asset.
• How a Cambodian slave-labor camp escapee became a successful U.S. entrepreneur.
• How the author's attempt to do nothing became an instant fiasco.

Readers have raved. One predicts you "will chuckle, you might cry, but you will definitely relate to these enjoyable bite-sized essays." Others have labeled contents of The Roving I "brilliant," "wit and wordplay," "like hanging out at a small-town coffee shop and meeting the guy who knows them all personally," and "an antidote to the ugliness all around us."

Find out for yourself why so many maintain you can delight in virtually every word. The book - a quick read that can be savored in one satisfying sitting or one chapter at a time - is available now.

Once you've dipped into it, you can put it down, of course, but you most likely will choose not to.