Stop Making Sense is perfect in and of itself but The Name of This Band is Talking Heads is better. Plus it serves to remind us all that the band does not use a definite article.

It sounds like Loder did understand the context and, while he was being a bit too pithy (Loder being Loder), he was acknowledging the meaning of "rebel songs" and placing U2's song on some kind of higher moral ground. Or something.

This is what I was looking for before I said the same thing. This is true, true, true. The Truth. Verifiable and everything. Bona fide.

I'm not saying that it's not their best. I think I've got too much of a sentimental bias to make that call. Suffer is the other one that I've spent the most time with but I've enjoyed a lot of their albums.

Against the Grain has always been my favorite but I don't think I'd say it's their best, just the one that hit me at exactly the right time. And my senior year high school AP English teacher didn't know the word "anthropocentric" so that tickled me.

I saw them at Medusa's the day I graduated high school and I saw them at maybe the last indoor Riot Fest. I was ready to swear that I've seen them more times than that but Wikipedia has done a pretty good job of documenting their tours up into the 90s and I don't think I have. Regardless those two shows were almost…

No, it isn't at odds with him being angry. It's at odds with serious not being the opposite of funny. Pratchett wrote very funny books about very serious things. If all he'd cared about was making people laugh The Colour of Magic would have been the template for the Discworld series. Instead the series went on to…

I'm not sure if you're really replying to my comment or not, with the "morbid monster" and "normal for people to be complicated" bit and then trying to deliver a lesson on satire that seems to miss that humor is not the point of satire so I'll just go stand over here now and wait to see if something else happens.

"It’s not that the comedy makes the lessons go down easier. The comedy is the lesson."

omg your 8 y.o. niece is totally wrong about being too old to be read to.
Seriously, some books beg to be read aloud. A lot of those books I bought from an orangutan at a library sale. It's kind of unnerving the way they plead to be opened and read. I've taken to chaining them to the bookshelves.

The Aching books (my favorite of the lot) aren't as funny as the rest of the Discworld books, except for the Nac Mac Feegle who are a huge part of the series and some of his funniest creations.

I could come up with more to say about this but I don't have the time at the moment. For now, I'll say the closing rings very wrong to me and that Neil Gaiman's portrait of Pratchett as an angry man seems closer to true.

I enjoyed The Mourner but it's been my least favorite. It had a few parts that I found tedious and I can't think of any other Westlake book that I could say that about. I can't remember The Jugger though so that may say something. **SPOILER** Is that the one where he makes the teenage boy dig his own grave?

For a 9 y.o. start with The World of Poo. I didn't think much of it but my oldest read it when he was 7 and loved it. He's pushing 9 now and I think he'd still go for it.

The only reason I don't recommend The Hunter to start is that it doesn't follow the formula that much of the series follows. Is The Score the first one that nails it down?

No, you fool. I meant The Score. I would have said "The Handle" if I had meant The Handle. Obviously I meant The Score when I said "The Heist."

I was looking forward to Dodger sequels. I figured they'd be something like the Tom Sawyer sequels but better.

I Shall Wear Midnight slayed me. It's really dark and heavy and we never finished reading that one to the kids but I think it's the best of the Tiffany Aching books.

I have not read all of the Dortmunder (comic) or Parker (hardboiled) books yet but What's The Worst That Could Happen? is probably my favorite of the Dortmunder series and The Heist The Score is a good representation of the Parker series. Both series reward the reader who reads in order but it's not usually necessary…

As you are too modest to share: http://sdelmonte.dreamwidth…
Poignant that they were "two of my favorite living authors" when you wrote that.