The first book for me to give up on in 2007 is Jose Saramago's The Double, which is too bad because I was really looking forward to reading it. The premise enticed me; the execution disappointed me. I gave it 40 pages, which is generous, since I usually only give a novel 25 pages to hook me. The prose is meandering and abundantly tangential. The language wasn't especially pretty or provocative, in fact it was rather mundane. I kept losing focus while reading. Perhaps I'll return to it some day down the road, but for now I'm moving on.

Click here to check out an interesting OP/ED piece Zizek wrote for The New York Times last Friday.

For a chance to watch the artist's process, the following is a three minute time lapse of Pablo Picasso at work: