Tellingly, no such reek of obvious falsehood lingered around a story of a slurring Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, promising the next Premier League champions "as many God-damned braised papist orphans as they can bloody well digest."

Oh, that's really good. +1

Oh, come on, this is nit-picking. After all, what's a minor spelling error next to the much more grievous mistake that was man's first fateful embrace of the poison-spewing demon teat of technology?

Gaines: Reading DUAN, Sobbing Into My Pillow, Prolly Go Find A Stray Dog And Call It A Jerk, and Other Things I Might Do Tonight

Gaines: Being a Deadspin Writer , Being a Jalopnik Writer, Losing My Virginity, and Other Accomplishments I May Have Overstated a Tad

Gaines: Having Lots of Great Sex, Eating Delicious Chocolate, Digital Animation, and Other Things That Used To Be Good But Suck Now

"Cleveland 117, San Antonio 109."

Proving the old folk superstition that tragedies always come in threes, the New York Post's Phil Mushnick has not died today.

Here's a thought experiment, Wise Media Critic Guy: imagine that the dipshit who plays the vampire guy in the Twilight movies publicly, uh, "misspoke" his marathon time by more than an hour, and also falsely claimed to have once been a regular marathoner as part of a broader claim to being a highly motivated athlete…

Well hey, I can't say that I've ever even opened Julian - although I do remember shelving it a few times in a prior life as a bookseller - so I can't say whether it's great or terrible. You've made me curious to read it.

That must be the exact place where we diverge into two separate people. I utterly detest Gore Vidal, and I think Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest novelists to have ever lived.

Well hey, I don't want to give you the misapprehension that Blood Meridian pays off in the kind of way that The Road did, where you walk away from it with at least a tiny little faint glimmer of hopefulness. Because, uh, yeah, it really really doesn't.

I haven't, but I just looked up a summary of it, and now I'm going to have to. Thanks for the rec.

I can't blame anybody who quits on that book. There were times in my first reading when I couldn't decide whether I wanted to toss the book across the room, or invent a time machine, travel back to the 1840s, find the real Glanton Gang, and strangle them all to death. I think what propelled me through those places…

House of Leaves was a blast, and yeah, wonderfully spooky. This one's different, because it's a collection of pulpy, purply short stories rather than a novel, but yes, many of them are delightfully spooky.

Oh yeah? And what if he's both, professor?

Heh, it's funny, you know, as soon as I posted that, I started trying to come up with the shortest possible list. I got bogged down after Blood Meridian and To Kill a Mockingbird, but the point is that whatever else makes it onto the list, Blood Meridian is on it.

Listen, I think I can say this without hyperbole whatsoever: Blood Meridian is on the extremely short list of the greatest novels I've ever read, and I've read lots and lots of novels. It's a punishing read in places, but an incredible and incredibly rewarding book.

Up yours!

Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell by, uh, Ramsey Campbell. I'd been reading a lot of heavy Great American Novel type shit lately, and it was nice to transition to something utterly, unabashedly silly, especially as we're getting closer to autumn and Halloween season is lurking just…