Rest in peace, Rabbit.

John Updike died on January 27 in Danvers, Massachusetts, at the age of 76. Many will mourn the passing of Updike, a renowned novelist, essayist, and critic, perhaps best known for his four Rabbit novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.

At the Home & Garden blog, we have a connection to Updike not only as fans of his work but also because the protagonist of the Rabbit series, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, might just be the fiction world's most avid reader of Consumer Reports.

A collection of Updike's work at Harvard is said to contain original manuscripts with many of the same back issues of Consumer Reports that provide comfort and escape for Rabbit, especially during Rabbit Is Rich, which came out in 1981. And in John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion, author Marshall Boswell details a few references to Rabbit's fondess for Consumer Reports.

Rabbit Is Rich is filled with references to our magazine and car coverage; a mention on the first page, with Rabbit working at a car dealership, reads: "The f---ing world is running out of gas. But they won't catch him, not yet, because there isn't a piece of junk on the road gets better mileage than his Toyotas, with lower service costs. Read Consumer Reports, April issue. That's all he has to tell the people when they come in."

Interestingly, the novel is set in 1979-80, another period of profound economic malaise for this country. Were a new Rabbit novel to appear today, it's likely that Harry would still be reading Consumer Reports. Heaven knows our advice is as timely as ever.—Steven H. Saltzman and Daniel DiClerico