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:D :D :D Just the idea of a collection of Dubya's speeches in printed form is hilarious. I've just started reading Robert Graves' I, Claudius for the third or fourth time.

Much of the action in Theodore Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels is set in a travelling carnival. You might also fing FREAKS GEEKS & STRANGE GIRLS: SIDESHOW BANNERS OF THE GREAT AMERICAN MIDWAY a useful reference.

Many Christian fundamentalists have problems with the depiction of spirits or of the supernatural. Some people have problems with too-realistic reflections of the way real people speak. There are always some people who have problems with any kind of reference to the sex act. I believe this is...

That's how I felt about Stranger in a Strange Land. I mean, it was OK, but nothing to base a religion on, as some people seemed to want to try to do. Come to that, I'm coming to believe Heinlein was over-rated as a writer. He had a few clever ideas, at least one per novel, and he was smart...

I have a cheap edition of Poe's Tales Of Mystery & Imagination featuring several color plates and lots of creepy little line drawings by the Victorian painter Arthur Rackham. I've had it probably 20+ years and it's one of my favorite books. It includes The Imp of the Perverse; The Tell-Tale...

I expect you'll find House a bit of a departure for Mr. Laurie. It's not like anything I've seem him do before. I saw many commercials for the series before I finally recognized him. Another English actor who seems to have taken a new direction in his career since arriving on these shores is...

Here's an author whose every book has something unusual and intriguing to enjoy. He's usually categorized as a fantasy writer, but his work transcends the genre. In his best work, in which I would include The Tooth Fairy, The Facts of Life, and Smoking Poppy, he is developing a uniquely English...

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) is turning out to be one of my favorite authors. So far I have read four of his novels, Of Human Bondage (1915), The Magician (1908), The Razor's Edge (1944), and The Moon and Sixpence (1919). Even though these books were written between sixty and a hundred...

Oh, thank you! I hadn't seen this before. Presumably he was talking about KJV.

...are all excellent. Also the often overlooked The Game Players of Titan--more straight ahead SF but still containing several quirky, typically PhilDickian riffs on the nature of truth and reality, I also liked VALIS and Divine Invasion.

I don't bother going into big stores. They are not interesting to browse and they usually don't have any particular title I'm looking for. If I bought more (ie, any) NYTimes best sellers or Oprah book club selections then I might go more often. I enjoy browsing the small stores because the...

Foucault's Pendulum is an enjoyable read although personally I preferred In the Name of the Rose. Pendulum is an expression of the author's rationalism and distrust, one might even say contempt, for the paranoiac "conspiracy theory". I believe it was inspired as a reaction to The Holy Blood...

Try The Dragon and the Unicorn, The Eagle and the Sword , The Serpent and the Grail by A. A. Attanasio.

Hofstadter is College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science, Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at Indiana University at Bloomington. I read this book several years ago. Hofstadter manages to make some very...

I've never yet had to put a book down because it was too scary: on the contrary, I've often found that I'm not able to put a book down for that reason. When I'm alone on a dark road at night, it's scenes from M. R. James that most often pop into my mind, unbidden and unwelcome. The school...

Wow. I couldn't disagree more with some of these posts. Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books although I can see how it might seem too much like hard work if all you're used to reading is Harry Potter and Stephen King. It's like the difference between Brtiney Spears and J. S. Bach. If...

I haven't read Trainspotting. I enjoyed Porno. The characters are well-developed and believable, the plotting is pretty tight. Only two--Begbie and Spud--of the six or so characters are written in dialect and the dialect's really pretty easy to understand once you start to get into it. For...

I just finished reading W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. Not necessarily his best book, but still extremely enjoyable. Whenever I read one of Maugham's books, I always marvel at his ability to sketch living breathing characters in a few sentences and I always enjoy his observations...