Vizzini said "Go back to the beginning" ... so I have

Typos free of charge.

Coming here to write this post I noticed I have like 3 drafts from months ago that I lost track of and never got around to posting. I tend to take 5-6 big ideas, and start banging away at a post that is going to pull these ideas, 3-4 completely unrelated stories, maybe a past years book, and a movie or two and pull them all into a neat, tidy, and devastatingly profound point. Our 2.5 readers will be astounded, changed even. I'll be able to quit my day job, and churn out gems like this post every few days and roll in the filthy lucre that brings in. And them I get busy, and forget to finish, or go back and edit, or research clever images that if you're paying attention, and privy to my inner monologue, you too would find hilarious. Look, I spend my days in part looking into the dark corners of the social fabric-store, I can have dreams now and again.

So, while the generally illiterate gremlin who started this whole thing (the blog - we kind of fell sideways into the book club thing - o.k. this is how it happened; In 2020 the world stopped and we all got sent home, I spent my days drinking various tonics, watching 2-3 old movies every morning before migrating to the patio with a bottle of red wine, a pack of camel's and a book - which was great, but every once in a while you want contact with other human's that don't live with you, and are not inside waiting for you to come in so they can tell you that you smell like a foot, and civilizational collapse does not mean you stop grooming - so I texted the illiterate - In January, before the end of civilization as we knew it he asked what I was reading, I was reading 1999: The Best Movie Year Ever, he said he would read it, fast forward back to where I smell like a foot, and text, and he asks what I'm reading now - I tell him A Brave New World, which I thought might be challenging because there are way more words than pictures, and it's a pretty challenging philosophically and morally complex dystopian classic; but that was the real beginning, he suggested we trade off months, and so we did...and by December we said let's make a list, like a book club, for next year, and keep this thing going, by then we were slowly returning to work places, and life, but no reason not to enjoy an occasional literary banger: And that is our creation myth) asked me to post our past lists into the blog, I decided I would make something of a post about it.

In a way, when we're (the royal we to say) stuck, our drafts aren't congealing, what better way to approach the problem than Inigo Montoya's going back to the beginning (The Princess Bride 2023 List). The following is the official selection committee monthly picks for 2020, in no discernible order:

1999: The Best Movie Year Ever; Hillbilly Elegy; The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; Little Eyes; Brave New World; The Last Samurai; Native Son

Personally, I read a lot more that year. A Brave New World was part of a year long classic science fiction kick I was on, which included quite a few bangers. I think the illiterate would agree with me though, Helen De Witt's The Last Samurai was the stand out selection of that year. It might be the best novel we've read as part of this club since we started. If you haven't read it, ask yourself why you don't like nice things, or go get a copy and fix that (think about it, that's really what you want to do. Most morning you lay in bed, before it becomes light. You stare at the ceiling. Maybe you think about reaching over for your phone on the nightstand so you can start doom-scrolling. Anything to prolong the moment before you have to swing your legs over the side and start the 16 hour downward slide into whatever shit show day you have going. Right then though, is when you half think, I need to change something. I can feel better than this...I can BE better than this!! And yes, goddammit you can, you will, but first you have to read The Last Samurai.)

We've gone long though. The illiteratti wants me to post all of the years' lists too. I'm not doing it all in one post though. Because I have taste, and manners, and my train is almost to the station. Till then then.