You might know - is this being released in the UK?

If you like Borges but find his stuff a little on the short side, try China Mieville's 'The City and the City'.  It's a sad day for left-leaning British sci-fi, but let's find hope where we can.

I started with 'Use of Weapons', which is great, but (having now read the entire series in a seven month bleughhh) I reckon that 'The Player of Games' might be a good way in.  'Matter' is very medieval-fantasy in its home-world plot, which is atypical of the Culture generally.

M and W?

And Spider-Pup's alter-ego would be Beter Barker. Hey, it works for all of them! (Everyone ignore Batpup).

I'm just a boy, standing in front of a girl, saying, "I … I … I … y'know … well … I …"

I think you wrought it right.

Isn't it the shitty cartoon version of Nobel-prize winning author William Golding's 'The Inheritors'?

I think that everyone on this thread needs to go away and listen to 'Asleep and Dreaming', 'The Book of Love' and 'All My Little Words'.  Just because Merritt is an incredibly witty pop lyricist, doesn't mean he can't do emotion as well.  Clever people have feelings too!

Uh … isn't the US equivalent David Blaine, without whom Dynamo would not exist?

Really, really, genuinely surprised and pleased by the outpouring of love for this film - I had assumed everyone would be a bit 'meh' over it, but it really is Nolan's best.  Stunning design (production-wise and script), good performances, lovely games played with audience.

If Tesla is a cameo, then Dench got an Oscar for a cameo in 'Shakespeare in Love'.

Steve Coogan was once interviewed about that Alan Partridge line, where Alan says his favourite Beatles album is, "Err … Best of the Beatles?". Coogan said that, although it's a very Alan thing to say, he does agree with him. What could be better than a "Best Of…"?

I like the idea that short books (eg Gatsby) are easier to perfect that longer ones.

*appears in it*

To a hammer, everything is a nail.

I never thought I'd live to see the day that 'The Bill' was mentioned in the same thread as 'The Wire'. I used to catch bits of it, but always assumed it was "Oi!" viewing for Sun readers. Really worth checking out those early series?

I can name neither songs nor Secretaries, but I did once go to a Scout Jamboree in the Netherlands, in 1995. I don't recall any music or any sex, of any flavour. Did tie quite a few knots, though.

His other work is also stunning. And his life story, he had a terrible time as a hugely repressed monk in Victorian Wales and lost his faith towards the end of his short, reasonably miserable life. His final (surviving) poem, 'To R.B.' finishes with the four saddest and most uplifting lines I think I've ever read.

Although I am a man and do not want to become a nun, or indeed want to be religious in any way, my favourite poem has always been Gerard Manley Hopkins' 'Heaven-Haven (a nun takes the veil)'. It works like ketamine.