How to talk about books you haven't read

I came across this book How to talk about books you haven't read by Pierre Bayard, a Paris University lit professor (it's translated from French). It was funny and I wish I'd read it earlier – could've saved me some mugging for A level Lit eh

One hugely insightful comment I read was (I'm paraphrasing; can't remember it word for word, obviously) that every act of reading is also an act of non-reading. A counter-gesture is what he called it. To have picked up a particular book from a shelf is to have made a decision not to read all the other books that exist. I forget, though, what conclusion was drawn from this, but no doubt it was deep, for it impressed me.

He also introduces a taxonomy of books

• UB: book unknown to me
• SB: book I have skimmed
• HB: book I have heard about, and
• FB: book I have read but forgotten

And for HB, he creates the symbols ++, +, -, and --, for what he has heard about them – extremely positive to extremely negative in that order. Brilliant.

Anyway, How to talk about books you haven't read is an SB for me; for those who're interested it's available at Borders, and there're more reviews here:

Times Online
Guardian
NY Times

America, by Allen Ginsberg

A sound recording of Allen Ginsberg reading a draft of his poem "America" in 1956.

If you thought inference questions were tough...

I remember those buggers in the GP comprehensions - the RJ papers would require you to draw all kinds of inferences from the placement of a comma, or a slight change of tone or register. But this takes the cake: the New Yorker's cartoon IQ test. There're 5 cartoons whose punchlines are incredibly obscure, and you have to pick a reason (out of 4 choices) why it's supposed to make sense. Don't be depressed if you don't score too highly.

combo no. 5

My God, this thing is 10 years old, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday.

Combo no. 5 (sadly I can't embed it - it'll autoplay)

heh

ouch this's gotta hurt.

sounds like a plan

where would we be without xkcd?