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I'm rotating between Edith Piaf and the soundtrack of the new film version of Sweeney Todd.

Glad to hear that you're okay. Hope the recovery continues well and that the surgery proves to have been a complete success.

I know. :) (PS: I really do need an emoticon that says: 'I get what you're saying and this is my attempt at a humorous response') :) Oil? ;)

There is nothing wrong with "fat asses", Sparkchaser. A friend of mine gave me a lovely fridge magnet a few years ago – it's got a picture of two Rubenesque women, nude (as is the way with these old paintings), and it notes that: "One day, big butts will be back in style". :)

What is "citation styler"?

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." HL Mencken...

To all the members here from the US. Just promise the rest of us that it won't be another fruitbat religious fundamentalist thicko warmonger. Please. Pretty please. I'm not sure what the rest of the world did to have to suffer Dubya, but enough already!

I have a number of bookmarks around the flat, many of which have come with books from my local, independent bookseller.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld books always make me laugh out loud. As do Tom Sharpe's books (apologies to The waveguide). The most recent laugh-out-loud book that I read, however, was Gore Vidal's Live from Golgotha, which prompted several loud guffaws.

So little attention that I had never heard of them until reading this thread. You'd think that we'd all read it in the zunes. I'll get me coat.

Just ordered another batch from The Folio Society – their sale was just too tempting. A two-book history of Africa for the other half's forthcoming birthday, plus he wanted The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (at half price, it's a bargain). Then I ordered JE Neale's Elzabeth I and four of PG...

Umm. I've enjoyed reading since I was a child, but I was never a voracious reader, and I had a phase after college, when I'd come close to having some sort of breakdown, when I couldn't read a book; I'd get a few pages in but then no further. The first books that got me back on the reading road...

There are places where God is reported as telling his followers to "take" virgins left after a battle and do what they wanted with them. As I said earlier, there is nowhere in the Bible where female consent is considered worthy of mention. So, can we assume that God actually meant: 'go and have...

I think that it raises a very interesting issue, which is that, while the Bible itself portrays a sadistic, tyrannical and jealous god, the Christian churches of the 21st century generally try to get around this by portraying God in a better light. They do not, for instance, mention the times in...

There are days that I really don't think that you're far off with that, Stewart. We seem so utterly dazzled by absolutely everything from the US that we seem in a mad rush to copy it all, from government thinking that marketisation is the way forward for the NHS, to huge swathes of people...

No. But in the era since the 1980s, when the government of the day decided to start butchering arts funding (after all, why would the less-well-off need to go the theatre or go to drama school etc?), opera – certainly in terms of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden – seems to have enjoyed...

Ban children from reading the Bible I say. All that rape and child abuse, sanctioned and ordered by Yahweh – who'd want their children reading that sort of stuff? My (very religious) mother heavily monitored my reading, well into my teens. I remember once bringing home a copy of Arthur...

I would have thought that The Matrix would be a better (and more populist) illustration of solipsism – a sort of teenage boy's version of the Cartesian "I think, therefore I am". Too much of either will simply screw with your mind. Even Descartes copped out by ultimately deciding that God was...

As has already been mentioned, different denominations have different traditions. In the Methodist church, in which I was brought up, infant baptism is customary, but you only become a member of the church later, after various talks etc. It's a little like a form of confirmation. What this...