Canon

If you really want to learn how to write a convincing story for more people than you could ever convince is true or meaningful, learn to write a sermon. You'll neither forge a more silvery tongue, nor craft a more deft set of instruments. Sermons are of the most dangerous rhetorics.

The humanities' Fallen (read: academics who aren't actively in a college or university department), like myself, tend to preen themselves, in order to prop up their self esteem, with their personal libraries. I obsess over my academic bookcase. Every few months, I'll make sure the books are in a particular order: chronological? alphabetical? thematic? Must... re-sort... them!

The Book of Common Despair.