A wonderful post. And of course this stuff matters. Of course it all makes a difference. At the very least, pop culture serves as a gauge of where the world is and where it's heading. And at the most, it serves as a steering wheel or a gas pedal to take it there. Realistically, I'd say it's a bit of both, and I'd…

Though I have to say the shopping carts guide is AMAZING, unironically amazing, and the Found books are a ton of fun. Look for Mike Smith from Albuquerque, NM in Volume 2—my finds are all over it. And I just ordered the roundabout guide. So this list does have some merit….

Hey, that actually sounds kind of cool. And the author is a founder of the Riot Lit Collective, which N.Frank Daniels, who wrote the hilarious and haunting book FUTUREPROOF is from. I might read this.

THIS LIST HAS SOME REALLY CRAPPY STUFF ON IT.
THE DARWIN AWARDS? Seriously? That book is TERRIBLE. It's as breezily, flippantly written as a high-schooler's blog; loaded with white space; piss-poorly researched and loaded with unchecked urban legends; as full of fiction as facts; and almost unceasingly…

By the way, Ficta, thanks for that great to-read list of plays. I'm going to use it as a future reference.

I'm wishing we'd thought to mention the guy back when the AVC was taking suggestions.

Yay! It's great to see that people are getting excited about joining up and taking part. And I hadn't even thought to take into account the Facebook diaspora. You all won't regret getting into this.

A recent quote from poet/Proust translator Lydia Davis:

ARCADIA is such a great play it makes me want to end my life, because can anything really get better than this? It's like everything I like and that feels vital and important to me gathered and reconfigured into one perfect work of art. I highly recommend the recent BBC audio performance of it as well. If any Tom…

In Keith's defense, this may be the result of all the tryl narrer in RIDDLEY WALKER, a recent Wrapped Up In Books selection which featured a more phonetically transcribed English.

I thought the first half of SHUTTER ISLAND was one of the best first halves of a film that year. However, that ending was totally unsatisfying, and almost made me hate the whole thing. HOLLYWOOD: IF AN ENDING HAS BEEN USED IN FIFTY RECENT MOVIES ALREADY, WE DON'T NEED TO SEE IT AGAIN.

Just thinking about all this crap
made me have to listen to the Shirelles' "Baby It's You" half-a-dozen times to get the bad taste of it all out of my mouth. That song is made of excellence.

The writer of that article absolutely loaded it full of compelling items. I can't believe she was a wartime censor in Nazi France!…especially as I'd just read about that era of her life in the hero-worshipping exercise in mythmaking that is DURAS: A BIOGRAPHY, in which readers hear only of Duras' anti-war epiphanies…

It looks like it's based on the movie, and uses artwork from it.

Look, if you're going to do this book club, you need to commit! Come on, now, Sassy Pete! This is not the books-I-like-so-I-can-say-I-like-them book club. This is not the books-I've-already-read-club. This is the book club you commit yourself to no matter what the selection. Sometimes you will like it. Sometimes…

Or for really cheap on Amazon, if you're a book hoarder like myself. I just ordered both, $2 for SCANNER, less-than-a-dollar for CLOUD ATLAS. Sure, that doesn't include shipping, but you can at least say to your spouse, "Don't worry, it was only a dollar or two.*"

True. I think I even joined in for a comment or two in that discussion, and I wasn't taking part in the book club at that time, just because I love BLOOD MERIDIAN. Probably half the commenters on this site have already read SCANNER, or at least seen the recent movie.

Have you read it, and if so, is it good? There are hardback copies of it for less than a dollar on Amazon right now.

I like MIA's music quite a bit—but this makes her sound fairly unpleasant—though pretty rock and roll, too.

No, I missed it all. I had an event at my kids' school that I couldn't get away from.