Robert Benchley kept a special shelf of books that he favored for their titles:

• Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts
• Success With Small Fruits
• Keeping a Single Cow
• Bicycling for Ladies
• Diseases of the Sweet Potato
• Talks on Manure
• Ailments of the Leg

In a review of the New York City telephone directory, he wrote, “The weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages. The Russian school is responsible for this.”