By tom | October 24, 2005
Look, this isn’t as easy as you think. I have to trawl through Amazon’s amazing list of amazing lists to dredge this stuff up. This week’s award goes to Laura Schlessinger’s
The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.
For redress, see Corpus Argumenti Lauretti.
By tom | October 20, 2005
Prefacing always seems a peculiar, fraught experience. Recall A. W. Price’s Mental Conflicts and how he frames his work with the aid of E. M. Cioran:
A work is finished when we can no longer improve it, though we know it to be inadequate and incomplete. We are so overtaxed by it that we no longer [...]
By tom | October 12, 2005
This extended stay in the modern capital of Persia is lacking an appropriate, nay, deserving, reading companion. I wish my tattered copy of The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire is beside me (somehow, prejudices have rallied and ruled against the online substitute). It must only be this ragged copy, of course: survivor of [...]
By tom | October 10, 2005
One of the greatest blessings of the internet is the creation of alternative distribution channels for the dumbing down democratization of standards and commodification of taste. Witness allreaders.com. It offers “detailed book reviews from many different genres of books!” and the chance of untold riches upon submission of reviews, for which allreaders.com sets stringent criteria.
You [...]
The most peculiar things happen when one’s inalienable right to internet access is denied, as mine was for the past days while in (whisper it) Tehran. Not only did someone comment on a post here, thereby dispelling fears that this site’s commenting system was ill-installed, but that someone happens to be a someone who is [...]
This week’s prize goes to Joseph Jenkins for The Humanure Handbook This is marked at $16.49. No, that’s the amount you have to pay.
By tom | September 29, 2005
We know how bibliophiles are a little compulsive - as in obsessive compulsive - so Jim Spalding’s library project is a curse. Library Thing is a social cataloguing experience; essentially, it allows the average compulsive amongst us to catalogue our most noble of extravagances and, what’s more, with its built-in cross-referencing tool, lets OCDs / [...]
By tom | September 19, 2005
Dubya-Emdee [dub' -yuh -em -dee] n. an imaginary threat, upon which is based an extreme action.
Susan Henderson, writing in McSweeney’s The Future Dictionary of America.
By tom | September 12, 2005
I’m going to Hell anyway, so this should merely accelerate the process.
My first nomination for the newly inaugurated “Dumb Book Concept of the Week” award goes to Don Colbert (and his agent) for The What Would Jesus Eat Cookbook. Don, if you’re looking to corner the lucrative Far Right Christian Fundamentalist reading market, you’re on [...]
By tom | September 8, 2005
has started quite a racket over at The Believer: a monthly column startlingly entitled “STUFF I’VE BEEN READING”. Now, I like Nick - despite his Gooner inclination - and quite a bit since he decided to jump inside my head and take notes of what was going on in there. The resultant book, High Fidelity, [...]
