The Great Reading Competition
Introduction
Reviews
| List of Titles
| List of Authors
| Categories
| Overall Ranking
The Modern Library Top 100
The Great Reading Competition
Number of Books Reviewed So Far: 230
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| Overall Scoreboard | |||
| WILL | 2 | DAVE | 1 |
The Golden Egret
The Golden Egret is awarded to the winner of the Great Reading Competition. The trophy, pictured above, has a long and contentious history. Rumor has it that it was created by an itinerant barn builder who possessed the ability to travel great distances by imagining the funeral service of a foreign dignitary from his desired destination. As payment for a new pair of hunting boots made of koala leather he blinked his left eye seven times and produced a golden egret. This he gave to the Australian craftsman before disappearing into the ether. Later on this craftsman sold the egret to a banker in exchange for a cow that could tell the difference between right and wrong by swishing its tail, and the banker made a present of it to his wife, who later tossed it into the sea when her husband proved infidelitous. The egret was presumed lost, until, four hundred years later, a young boy found it lying in a tide pool in Southern California. I traded the boy two finger puppets and a length of string for the egret, and then used it as a paper weight, having no special use for
Though the real egret remains in my possession, its visage appears on the plaque you see above. When the plaque is awarded, the winner's name, as well as the contest period, is inscribed below the words "The Golden Egret". The first winner was Will, and for this I gave him a sound thrashing. Worry not, though, for he gained his vengeance when he, through stealth, stole the color from my right pupil, which is now a dull gray. Where will the egret be twenty or thirty thousand years from now? Only time will tell.
