Thanks for the link and quotation, Juanito. From those descriptions, it seems sort of vaguely reminiscent of The Possessed (my best book of 2010) yet totally dissimilar.

Good picks mattsg!

I have to admit I'm intrigued because Hitch-22 never registered on my radar of necessary books. I work in a bookstore and the hardcover I've been trying to flog in that category is "All The Devils Are Here" which I have yet to read and have been really looking forward to. Has anyone read it?

I've never seen that site before but that's so cool and impressive. I'm especially interested that there are a lot of A+ books I've never heard of. Some of you may have noticed that I totally love eastern european post-war angst so thanks so much for the tipoff, OP and others!

My dad is in the middle of 1000 Autumns etc. and is crazy about it.

I think the main quantifiable difference with print reading vs internet reading is that reading is less distracted — not totally undistracted, but less so. I'm a really fast reader and I still read a lot of books, magazines and newspapers in print, but much less so than when I was a kid, when I read a couple of books…

No, the writing is literally some of the best writing in the entire world. I guess it might not be for everyone, but it's academic rather than "voice-y" in a cute way. I don't think it' s, say, written in a style that non-hipsters will find annoying, which is a frequent complaint about memoirs. I was laughing so hard…

The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Far and away the best book of the year and probably the best book I've read in the last five or so years. I've yet to meet anyone else who's read it (that I didn't give it to). I majored in Slavic Languages & Literatures, but probably just anyone who likes to read, or did comp lit or grad…

Their Mad Men recaps are embarrassingly bad. They speculate boringly and inaccurately about characters' motivations, misconstrue details of the show, and neglect to Google interesting period references. I'm so glad they don't do Breaking Bad.

I fucking love The Wackness. Ben Kingsley is great in it, the story is sweet and super nostalgic, and the soundtrack is so banging. "Can't You See" is like the best song ever.
To tie this into the article, that movie is also a pretty realistic portrayal of a romantic relationship(s).

This American Life is the shit. I probably like it more than any other piece of media ever with the possible exclusion of Breaking Bad, Mad Men and the Pixies. I actually gave them money last week, that's how much I love TAL.

IS this only 2010 podcasts? I think the best podcast ever is New Yorker Out Loud but it's a few years old.

Listened to Culture Gabfest once and couldn't stand it. I have a total love/hate with Slate though.

I listened to the Savage Lovecast episode that featured Adam Carolla as a guest and I thought he was an insufferable douche (had never heard of him before). It sort of seemed to me that Dan Savage thought so too but was just being polite but I could have been totally projecting.

Rocky Raccoon is my favorite Beatles song. (I really don't like the Beatles much so take that as you will.)

For some weird reason spell check won't say that "trepidatious" is a word, even though it totally is.

No way the third season is better than the second! Nothing is better than the second. The third season is still really good, but it didn't have the relentless narrative arc of the second season. I ended up feeling it didn't hang together as a season, even though the individual episodes were really good. Also I thought…

Too lazy to speculate about the algorithm they use for turning five lists into one list but I would imagine that the fact that Tasha Robinson put it at #3 ensured its presence on the master list. I think the effect of combining the lists is also what put Winter's Bone at #1 even though only Keith Phipps had it at #1…

Oh yeah, also, JoeyBelle, based on your professional experience, I think it is possible that your impressions are a little skewed toward observing only those people who have had the most problems with meth, leaving out those people who are not involved in its use and production extensively enough to suffer repeated or…

I am totally unfamiliar (personally) with the region/area depicted in the book, but the author, Daniel Woodrell, is actually from there and I think writing from experience. The book is "grittier" than the movie in that it's a lot more violent and grosser (vivid scenes of loss of bowel control etc.). It also has some…