If my only Greene experience was failing to finish The End of the Affair due to lack of interest, what would you recommend as an alternate starting point?

I'll put it on the list, thanks.

Ah… well… Um. If you like him for being defiantly positive, maybe stop now? Heh.

To the main love triangle - Anna, Karenin, Vronsky - Chekhov wrote two short stories in response. The first is a parody, "Anna on the Neck", that's one of the funniest, most acidic things he ever wrote. The second is a serious response to Tolstoy's understanding of human beings and love: "Lady with a Dog," possibly…

About halfway through Lessing's The Golden Notebook, which… I'm kinda loving? even though everyone I know hates it. I figured it was time to give it a chance, and while I wouldn't call her the best prose writer of all time, she's swift and effective, and her characters are vivid and compelling.

I'd say the key stories, in terms of "these are the ones you see referenced all over contemporary literature", are: "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (which is my favorite), "The Circular Ruins", "The Lottery at Babylon", "The Garden of Forking Paths", maybe "Funes the Memorious",…

Have you read Demons yet? I think in the long run that's been my favorite Dostoevsky. It's funnier and more mean-spirited than his other novels, which helps (and it's a bit of a bait-and-switch: the first section is a boring money-and-marriage drama, then it shifts gears into a different animal entirely.)

No exaggeration: I've probably read War with the Newts about a dozen times - it's not only my favorite SF book, but I'd put it in my top five novels of all time, easily. But it's been nearly impossible for me to convince other people to try it, because they're immediately put off by the concept.

Heh, she's done pretty well for herself in this era, too. She couldn't have been a badass punk rocker in the silent era, but here we are.

I'll believe it when I'm sitting on my couch bawling into a wad of kleenex after beating the game, and no sooner.

DO NOT, MY FRIENDS, BECOME ADDICTED TO CHOCOLATE. IT WILL TAKE HOLD OF YOU, AND YOU WILL RESENT ITS ABSENCE.

Yeah, I'm another person who converted from distracted hatewatching to watching with interest on the strength of this episode.

I think they added that line because Silvestre is not at all Mexican in real life, and it's a quick little lampshade on the casting. He is straight-up Spanish.

Heh, there's only one word in the entire song that ends in -ation. It's used twice - once at the beginning, and once at the end, and it doesn't rhyme with anything in the song.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the points the article makes, but you should never write an article criticizing cultural representation while admitting that you don't know what the culture in question is like (e.g. "I don’t know whether or not Hindus are taught to converse vernacularly with their gods in their temples,…

Nah, not really. The best parts of the show are also the ones that are easiest to follow: a few subplots here, a few gloriously crazy moments there. The main plot is actually pretty limp and nonsensical, and the writing overall is pretty uneven-to-bad: if the show were riding on that, I wouldn't recommend it so highly.

lol

Agreed. It's like the platonic ideal for this kind of interview: respectful, grateful, and informed… and best of all, it comes across as genuine and spontaneous instead of PR-constructed (which it may very well be, but still.)

No prob, and you should definitely check out the interview. Here's the money quote, on filming the sex scenes with Herrera:

Yeah, or at least publicly identified as such. Silvestre gave a good interview with Towleroad about his experience filming the show.