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Beam and Howard

Entry 32:

Yes, I had also noticed the ever-changing, fiery hues of Mr. Dershowitz's aging mane.  But of course I agree with you that he's one of God's great individual creations and a model to us all.

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I have a story idea for Eliza Truitt, our editor. (This is just to check if she actually reads these dispatches.) She wrote an interesting article on best-seller lists for Slate the other day; now a friend turns me on to the astonishingly stupid Modern Library Readers Poll of the 100 best novels in the English language. This is more or less a follow-on, and a corporate apology for, the astonishingly stupid Modern Library Board's selection of the 100 best novels that received so much attention a few weeks ago.

The conceit of course, is that we are hearing the vox populi in these latest selections. But because it is a web-based "poll," it appears to be subject to egregious fraud. Either that, or they gave Ayn Rand groupie Alan Greenspan 3 million votes. That's right, the top four novels all hail from A.R.: Atlas Shrugged,The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Anthem. L. Ron Hubbard's works occupy numbers 10 and 12. Draw your own conclusions.

Random House isn't returning my phone calls, so I thought a dose of public ridicule might perk things up.

Did they assign Ulysses at Brandeis? I bet they did.

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Margo Howard is Slate's advice columnist. Alex Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe.