picture of dorian gray | The Dubious Monk

just a flesh wound

I’ve been away from the bloggery since realizing you don’t really need to read about my writing insecurities. But since that’s the only thing I do apart from read, watch baseball and go to work anymore, there hasn’t been a lot of good fodder for typing about going on. I’ve got about 10 days worth of work left and then I relax a bit before making it good. Maybe then the blog’ll get more interesting.

Though I guess I’ve been reading and could talk a bit about that. V remains good and I’m not done yet. I got a bit bogged down again in Mondaugen’s story. There’s only so much decadent sjambokking I can read about in a sitting. But today I read Fausto’s Confession while the Jays finally beat the Orioles and it was fine.

When I got bogged down I turned to a couple of other books. I read The Picture of Dorian Grey and got sick real quick of the “wit” of saying that things are their opposite. In much the way that future generations will look on our sarcasm, I imagine. And I’ve been reading Walden which I think I should leave to its own post.

But yeah. I’m just rolling along, manufacturing things to be looking forward to.

real man book club

So Jared and Sean and I are standing out by a mom-borrowed-car drinking absinthe. Or something blue-green anyway, could have been antifreeze. It was in a non-tupperware plastic container, the kind you usually put leftovers in.

And Jared is talking about comics and is trying not to go all “Antimatter” on me, fully aware of the minefield he’s running and the idea is floated that we should read Faust. And some other books. We should each pick a book the others have to read in a year. And fuelled by (non-hallucinogenic) alcohol this seems like a good idea. Not at all like the kind of thing I get mad at Oprah for organizing. This is a Real Man Challenge but with books.

So what does Jared choose as his book the rest of us have to read? Take a look at the Real Man Book Club list and see if you can guess. (Hint: Sean yelled a bunch when Jared chose it.)

Faust by Goethe
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
V by Thomas Pynchon
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I have a couple of things to get through before I hit anything on this list (we do have a year after all), but I’m actually a little bit fascinated with the whole experiment. I’m sure that whenever we actually talk about any of these books it’ll just devolve into shouting at Jared, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The Dubious Monk

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just a flesh wound

real man book club

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