How’d you get yours early!? Mine’s coming Tuesday.

My biggest hero is the guy I saw who drove onto a sidewalk at UNC Chapel Hill, popped open his trunk, and sold me one of his dozens of complete Monty Python box sets.

Terry Long: The Beard is Just the Beginning

Terry Long: Here Comes the Fuzz

Sensible Slacks Year One

I’m seeing so many that you post that weren’t in the collected edition! It’s a joy.

But How To Travel With A Salmon is enjoyable, if a little dated. I did not find it deliriously funny, as it is very dry humor. It’s enjoyable, and the last essay where he mixes history with myth and emotions around life in Italy is worth all the other chapters alone.

(As I was reading it I happened to also be writing a 40-page paper on the religious schisms that Eco framed his narrative against, so it was making a lot of sense)

Eco’s prose is dense and academic but wonderful, I’ve read his books Name of the Rose, Baudolino, and The Prague Cemetery. I’m amazed Name of the Rose was such a hit, it’s a great narrative but references so much religious history that I couldn’t imagine it being a beach read for anyone.