I almost started this with "Good morning, it's..." Now that I've written a few posts attempting to imitate A Box of Matches, it feels a bit like habit. Once Nicholson Baker got the inspiration, I suspect it was an easy book to write. Slipping into "Emmett Mode" and jotting down every thought that comes into your head is an awful lot like blogging. Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion, which will remain open for as long as the posts remain on the home page. Even if you haven't read the book, please feel free to add your own thoughts since discussing it is actually a jumping off point for discussing our own lives.

Going back to last month's discussion, here's an article from Times Online: "How the CIA won Zhivago a Nobel" (via aydin.net). According to Ivan Tolstoy, author of soon-to-be-released The Laundered Novel, the CIA helped publish Doctor Zhivago in Russian in 1958 as a means of securing the Nobel Prize for Pasternak. In my mind, there's no doubt the prize is, in part, political, so CIA intervention in promoting propaganda against the evil Soviet Empire doesn't surprise me at all. Although I hated both the novel and movie versions of Doctor Zhivago, Tolstoy's book might be one to add to the TBR list. The Washington Post also reports on this in "The Plot Thickens" (may require registration).

I'm well into February's selection, What is the What, and I've been enjoying it immensely so far. It's a timely read considering all the "Save Darfur" commercials on television. In a Conversational Reading post about David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest Barrett Hathcock wondered, "What would it be like to read Eggers’s What is the What without any memory of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and all of the hype and back-lash hype (and on and on) that exists?" I have no idea since I read and was annoyed by Eggers's memoir, but I can say that this book (so far) is written from a first-person perspective in which the narrator isn't completely full of himself. It's tragic and sad, but I'm liking it.