Books I've actually finished lately: 5

NB, though:

A national way of life strongly imbued with such Calvinist virtues as propriety, dutifulness, and moral vigilance has not conduced to boldness of thought.

- JM Coetzee

Teensy bit snooty perhaps, but still...

I’ve been dipping in Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, for no particular reason, other than that I like thought — I’m sick of the relentless, numbing emotionalism of American culture.

- Aleksandar Hemon, in The Millions

InDefinition - 62

phoner, n. erection achieved during phone-sex.

Also

Mike Shallcross ‏@Mike_MensHealth40m

@NickCohen4 @alexmassie If God was a writer, the world would have been made in 35 days, and the Garden of Eden would be way too flowery

Comic literature (is probably bad for you)

Literary Interest ‏@InterestingLit1h

On this day in 1882, Anthony Trollope died - from a stroke which he had suffered as a result of laughing too heartily at a comic novel.

And God sayeth

God ‏@TheTweetOfGod13h

People who brag about being politically incorrect tend to also be morally, ethically, factually, and grammatically incorrect.

Emphasis mine. (Yes, I'm editing God now.)

i.m. Omar Khayyám (or, 'Clause 56')

d. 4.10.1131

For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up" and "Down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom,
Was never deep in anything but--Wine.

- The Rubaiyat, transl. Edward FitzGerald

[with thanks to AC, for the tip-off]

I am indebted

to Jonathan Grimwood's The Last Banquet for the knowledge that 'condom' was not only (once?) rendered into French as 'redingotes Anglaise', but also that this was itself a wilful mis-'translation' of the English 'riding coats' - an actual fashion item at the time.

Likewise - if rather less exotically - to JM Coetzee('s translation of 'Basho', by Cees Nooteboom) for the fact that 'door' in Dutch translates as 'through' in English.

Well... obv.

Retarded

For the two-handed man in your life.

[With thanks to (FM for making me hang around for ages in) Paperchase.]

Books I've actually finished lately: 4

Incorporating - amongst other things - the most inspired index ever published. [To wit:

Bang Bang

Chitty-Chitty, 1968
Kiss Kiss, 2005
(My Baby Shot Me Down), 1966

and

Curses

...
Fuck, 21, 23-25, 35-36, 40, 44, 47, 53, 62, 64, 66, 76, 84, 90, 93-94, 103, 107, 109-110, 114, 116, 119,120]