It never happened, of course. I have ideas but I don't often follow them through.

... or unless the author can do their own translations (Nabokov, Beckett) or at least give them a once-over (Eco).

I was an Eco 'fan' before he'd published any fiction. When I read - in a French literary magazine - that his first novel, Il Nome della Rosa, was due out in Italian with a French version to follow, I resigned myself to having to read it in French. My Italian wasn't good enough, and I didn't expect such an obscure author to be translated into English.

I was wrong. As a medieval-style penance, for several years I used to reread the whole book on December 25th every year. It beats any other Xmas activities I can think of.

Later, I interviewed both Eco himself - who bought me a whiskey in his hotel - and Jean-Jacques Annaud, who directed the film version.

A rose is still a rose.

You must drink a lot of whisky =]

My experience with that book was slightly different. When I was about 12 I decided that living at home sucked (of course, right?!). So I decided to go to boarding school. Parents need to pay more money to let you go to that type of place which meant I wasn't getting to go. However, I found one where the students paid their own way through use of manual labor. It was located at a Catholic monastery in the hills and by essentially giving up most of your free time to build things, like churches and their associated buildings by hand, you could then have your tuition and board paid.

You would think that reading anything other than school work would be something there was no time for, but when you don't have tv or radios and you aren't a very good christian, you find that church makes a great time to read! 3 books a week's worth of time in fact.

So imagine me, i've read a couple dozen books by now and i'm getting more comfortable with my new surroundings and more comfortable with the thought of 'bigger' books. I stumble on 'the name of the rose' and read it in the middle of nowhere, in a monastery.

now that was a great book!

I'm in the process of switching from 1.e4 to 1.d4 but I also want to learn the setup you describe above. As a general guide I've been looking here:

http://main.uschess.org/content/vie...

After 1.Nf3, I find most people opt for one of three main systems:

1...Nf6 and 2...g6, leading usually to a King's Indian or Fianchetto Grunfeld.

1...Nf6 and 2...d5, which tends to become a Catalan or a QGD Tarrasch, but can also continue on pure Reti lines without d4.

1...c5, which is likely to be a Symmetrical English.

Some people play 1...f5 in the hope of transposing to a Dutch, but I like the Lisitsyn Gambit 2.e4 fxe4 3.Ng5, or the modern version with 2.d3. One recent game, though, reached a Stonewall Dutch via an unusual route: 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 Nc6 3.d4 e6 4.Bg2 f5, and I could find nothing better than a standard anti-Stonewall setup with b3, Bb2, c4, Nc3 etc.

I was confused myself. I think I meant squid.

Anyhow, one Sunday morning I was woken by a grinning cleric who said "Come on, you, you've got a date with an octopus".

Ok quick who wrote this

"We heed not flatterers,
He cried

By our command, waters retreat
Shown my power, halt at my feet

But the cause was lost,
Now cold winds blow"

Not to be confused with The Cattle Rancher's Handbook -- where you get one cow you tend to get an udder.

I don't really think it's Browning - though he liked to mythologize medieval rulers and repackage myths, and was sometimes hilariously wrong. Like the time he thought a 'twat' was part of a nun's costume, like a wimple.

Top Nun, innit? Well, more like Bottom Nun, in this case. I'd settle for Blue Nun.

Now there's a coincidence. Mine was of the Norbertine order, but close enough. We had church in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening - and on some of the days we got the grace of an extra latin mass before bed. They had these monitor types at the end of each pew that would take a count so that we could not skip any of them!

Yes it's <Peter Gabriel> wrote that, one of only two pop stars in history obsessed with 17th century English land reform. And Tesco's.

We considered that idea in the Harvey's Bristol Witnesses ... but we don't actually have a church, we're profoundly elitist and want to keep the riff-raff out of heaven (Nigel Short is cool, though) ... and our tipple of choice is sherry.

<As the bullion of a soul
Is smelted to liquidity
In the body's last act of alchemy

The crucible jerks, judders.
The philosopher's cojones:
always grandstanding.>

He's my favorite chess commentator, bar none, and he's a law unto himself.

Who else would dare refer to the black pieces as "the brothers," or ask a teenage Greg Shahade to tell his sister Jen that "I think she's got nice tits."

Doesn't fit the idiom, jerks you right out of the poem, like a puff of Brecht's cigar smoke in the face.

Unless that was your intention. The word renders an otherwise quite horrifying poem parodic.