After graduating college, I found my new Ikean bookshelves filled with nothing but books from various classes in Victorian Lit (all of which were marked with a big orange “Used” sticker) and several well-thumbed copies of US Weekly. Though my collection did manage to expose a couple suitors’ obsessions with Britney’s latest drinking binges or the use of simile in Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley, I wanted a library that did more than weed out weirdos and sycophants. I wanted a collection that would inspire sexy pseudo-intellectual banter while bringing a touch of class to my first post-college dwelling. I started by building one book at a time, and I eventually came up with what I think is the perfect library for looking (and maybe even being) sexily smart.
Gatsby loves Daisy, but Daisy’s married to Tom. Tom loves Daisy, but he’s having an affair with Myrtle. Tom confronts Gatsby and Daisy. Daisy and Gatsby leave in a tizzy, mowing down Myrtle on their way home. Melodrama ensues.
This short novel reads like an incredibly erudite episode of Days of Our Lives. Fitzgerald paints an indelible picture of the glamour, gaudiness, and depravity of the roaring ‘20s that’ll make you feel a little bit better about your own drinking and carousing.
It’s sort of like High Fidelity except it’s set in boutique publishing house in Italy instead of an underground record shop in Chicago, and instead of vinyl, the triad in this story are experts in occult conspiracy theories. In fact, Belbo, Diotallevi, and Casaubon know so much about the purported history of the Knights Templar and the Freemasons that they decide to invent their own conspiracy. But their plan begins to take on a life of its own…
It’s a satire wrapped inside a riddle, wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside a conundrum. Eco offers up a smorgasbord of esoterica guaranteed to impress both lit and math geeks alike!
Literature’s foremost neurologist takes readers on a tour of the bizarre world of brain disorders, painting riveting portraits of various odd people, including a man with no short term memory (think Lenny from Memento), the twin autistic savants who inspired the movie Rain Man, and a woman who can’t feel her own limbs.
The dude honestly mistakes his wife for a hat—need I say more?
New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell marshals the expertise of a cavalcade of academics to confirm what we already know: Our instincts are generally on target.
The payoff? Learn the fastest way to ruin a marriage, why some people prefer Coke to Pepsi, and the secrets of good salesmanship.
It’s World War II and there’s this US Army lieutenant named Tyrone who keeps having sex in places that end up getting bombed by V-2 rockets, see. So, his superiors send him to a casino in France (of course) where he learns about a mysterious device called the 00000, fabricated from a new kind of plastic invented by a man who could be responsible for Tyrone’s psychic sex romps . . . then again, he might not. So confused. Must rest eyeszzzzzzzzzzzz.
Masochism and/or an inborn need to feel like you’re better than everyone else. And, you know, masterful writing . . . blah, blah, blah.
This literary rag is published by San Francisco's famed McSweeney's, also known as the house that Dave Eggers built. Essays, pop culture criticism, and other nuggets of digestible pedantry fill the handsomely illustrated pages, and Nick Hornby's (About a Boy, High Fidelity) book reviews are always a highlight.
This alt-geek publication will help you bump up your culture quotient without investing too much time. Never underestimate the importance of the bathroom branch of your personal library.
Links:
[1] http://www.gradspot.com/print/18?page=0,1
[2] http://www.gradspot.com/print/18?page=0,1
[3] http://www.gradspot.com/print/18?page=0,1