What Fresh Hell Is This?

Since I'm always looking for more people to tell me what to do, how to act, and what to think, I was intrigued by this list of 1001 must-read fiction titles. And since anything that's vaguely interesting to me is bound to be earth-shatteringly life-altering for you, I share it with you now.

More lists:

- 100 essential Jazz albums

- The Thousand "best" films of all time (I will save you the cruel suspense: Ironman did not make the list)

- And, not quite a list, but a review of a list in book-form (can't wait for the audiobook!), Your Essential Reading List for Becoming a Literary Genius in 365 Days.

I love that last site, because a) it's called "Bookslut" (two of my favorite things!), and b) she mentions Neiszche, which as you well know is a primary symptom of pedantic nitwittery (see my previous posts).

Go forth and be enlightened, my delicious little monkey-lickers.

Short Round

Here's another nibble: Pulp Fiction, as written by William Shakespeare.

Put The Gun Down

No, I haven't forgotten you. I've just been really busy. Frantic really. Okay no, not really. Just lazy. Too lazy to form complete sentences, even. But I saw this thing today. A quote. From Umberto Eco, who's my favorite author of all time ever, and if he's not yours, well then talk to the hand. What's that? Nabokov? Okay, I forgive you. Anyway:

"A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis." - Umberto Eco.

I am totally gay for Umberto Eco. Even if he is an icky, seventy-five-year-old degenerate Italian. His "Foucault's Pendulum" has been described, to my intense rage and rising bile, as a "thinking man's DaVinci Code". To mention Dan Brown's execrable bolus of literary offal in the same sentence as Eco's transcendental prose is a disservice to the master semiotician's oeuvre. Whoever said this should have their tongue ripped from their head by wild dogs.