Lucius Beebe (who wrote a column for Gourmet) once produced a column that was a single sentence. When his editor (this was back in the days when editors would actually edit) complained, Beebe told him to break it up himself. The editor couldn't find anyplace TO break it.

I remember reading someone describe Beebe's writings as "so rococco you could carve grottos out of it."

I wasn't quite able to get into it, but Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch also has sentences that go for pages and pages and are occasionally entire chapters (LONG chapters).

I believe there's like a 17-page sentence in Swann's Way. Or at least it felt like it was 17 pages long.

Proust in his first book wrote about...wrote about

I've giving Dune another listen because, well because it was in my glove box when my other recording ran out.

I enjoying it quite a bit, but it's one of those books that oddly doesn't make me want to read more in the series. It feels like a complete experience and I don't want to dilute it with more.

The audiobook is great, full cast and very well produced.

Speaking of which, I added a page on my blog devoted to book recommendations of mine. I intend to add more detail as in the future, but FWIW. A lot of these are staples at the moment, but I've been listening to staples lately, it's what my library has for downloadable audiobooks.

[link]

I just finished Feed, by Mira Grant, my friend's zombie political thriller, described as Transmetropolitan meets The West Wing meets Night of the Living Dead, which makes it a very Buffista book, in my opinion. Also adding to this opinion is the fact that John Rogers loved it. There is also a cool website. Well done, Orbit.

The book is awesome and I think everyone should read it.

I'm not a big fan of the book club concept, but I'm in need of some motivation to power through my longer "should reads" for the year ( War and Peace and Don Quixote especially), so I'm trying to start a book salon at work, where we would read any book that falls within a given topic (a specific author, nationality, or theme). That way, people could choose something long or short, or read multiple books. For example, if we’re reading Dickens, and you didn’t want to tackle something like Bleak House, you could read his Christmas stories, or, if we’re reading Russian authors, you could choose a play by Chekhov, short stories by Gogol, or something like Crime and Punishment.

I want to give a few suggestions of themes and books. So far I have good lists for Classic "Boys" Adventure (The Lost World, The Count of Monte Cristo, Kidnapped, etc) and Dystopias (The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games trilogy, Neuromancer, Brave New World, The Children of Men, V for Vendetta, 1984, etc.).

I also want to suggest "Quests" as a theme and need some more contemporary suggestions. So far I have:
Homer's Odyssey
Don Quixote
Le Morte d’Arthur
The Lord of the Rings
Virgils' Aeneid
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Beowulf
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Any "modern classic" ideas for this?

Maybe you should throw Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces in for discussion purposes?

Maybe you should throw Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces in for discussion purposes?

Don't think I didn't look there first for ideas! I figure when we actually get around to the theme, I will be reading that since it's been unread on my book shelf for years.