Is minutes of silence a requirement for a hidden track? I ask out of curiosity because if not, my choice for this list would be Superman on Lifes Rich Pageant which, if memory serves, was listed as "+" on the back of the album sleeve. PS I otherwise agree completely with your comment.

Not necessarily. Notwithstanding the "I now pronounce you man and wife" language, you are not actually legally married until you both sign the register. In most weddings that's done after the kiss….

Ok, my answers are a lot sunnier than most, so please forgive me in advance…things are about to get treacly.

Roald Dahl. Danny the Champion of the World is a beautiful book about parenting and single fatherhood. I never forgot Dahl's "Message to children who have read this book…" I try to be sparky with my kids (I don't reach the heights Danny's dad but I try!).

Like this? https://upload.wikimedia.or…

Well I wouldn't say these were "relationships" but when my wife went back to work after our son was born I took three months' paternity leave and I'm afraid the mums in a couple of the local parks were none too receptive to having a strange new man break entering their little cliques. Attempts at friendly…

If it makes you feel better, I didn't start my "forever" career till I was almost 30 and I had a big hole in my resume in my late twenties where I'd finished school and worked a low end job to save money up to travel. I would put those MA courses in your CV and be prepared to talk about why you didn't finish at your…

As one of the people who recommended a clean break (and who, moreover, warned against the power imbalance that usually accompanies such relationships!), congratulations, esp on being irritated that EP wasn't ML! It's not too late to unfriend her!!! But seriously, best wishes for a great 2016, both romantic and…

My main romantic regrets from my twenties are the two relationships I didn't end anywhere close to soon enough, thereby wasting years of my life where I potentially could have been happier and less lonely with other people. Down with long distance relationships! You almost certainly did the right thing. Don't make…

Sounds to me like she was forcing a break-up by changing the terms of engagement into something she <knew> would NOT be acceptable to you (you sound like a person with a healthy sense of self-respect-and I mean that as a compliment), thereby making the breakup your "fault". With the added benefit of making herself…

Liberalism, as I understand it, is about freedom and equality. "Empowering multiple voices" might be a byproduct of that but it is not the ultimate goal. Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and yes, freedom of religion and equality are what liberalism has always been about. The problem posed by fundamentalists…

Forgive me, but that seems to me to be the very essence of regressive liberalism. Why do you think you should not have a voice in this public discourse? If we are being asked to accept Muslim migrants/refugees/immigrants then we have every right to stand up and demand that they conform to certain tenets that we hold…

Why would you care if this douchebag realizes it or not? Let him continue through life acting the way he does and he'll get his just deserts. It's not worth your time or emotional energy. Move on!

If it is an "error" for an atheist to make fun of a religion, is it also an "error" for practitioners of that religion to propagate it? Such that an atheist could kill them for being religious and you would defend the atheist by saying the religion "blasphemed" against science/atheism? My point is that the atheist's…

This gets an A. Compare and contrast Samuel Jackson's interpretation with Morgan Freeman's….
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
I personally identify the barely suppressed rage of Samuel Jackson's performance.

If you're still in the mood for hard-boiled, I would suggest you try John Le Carre. It's espionage which is kind of like detective fiction (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is amongst other things a great whodunnit) and it is very, very cynical!

I found Catcher In the Rye to be kind of a bellwether for my own (im)maturity. I read it for the first time when I was about fifteen and loved it, completely identified with Holden, thought he told it exactly like it was, I reread it about once a year until my mid twenties, with my reaction dipping steadily until in…

Mansfield Park is also my favourite. But I would not read it unless you've already read at least P&P (surely her funniest book?), Emma, and probably S&S too. The comedy is rather absent in MP compared to her other novels.

I second that. I almost gave up on him before really getting started, at the point in M&C where he starts listing every single spar and sheet on the whole damn ship. I am so glad I persevered though, the series is fantastic. One of the few books that (I think) actually transports you to another time by showing how…

Point 1: those are very deep waters-trying to understand how people from another time thought?! Not the way we do today, for sure. I would hope that most men would have had the decency or courtesy to want their wives to be enthusiastic participants, but wow, I would never underestimate the power of religion and…