This year I'm trying to read all the books that I've heard of and should have read already by now. I think I mentioned that earlier. So far I've read 2001: A Space Odyssey, I, Robot, War of the Worlds, about half of Catch-22 (though entertaining, I couldn't get through it before I had to return it), I have Something Wicked This Way Comes sitting in my room but I haven't read it yet, same goes for Farenheit 451, you can probably tell I like science fiction... I've also read Eragon just because everyone's talking about it... it was okay, but not amazing. A bit of a weird plot, definitely not nearly developed enough in areas. But that's beside the point.

I'm starting to GET things now, allusions and references. One book had, in the second to last chapter, a line that went something like, I'm paraphrasing here I don't remember exactly, but it was like We had counted her, and her us, among the dead. Something like that, I forget the exact words. But that's the last line of War of the Worlds, modified a bit to be plural! Lemme go get my copy of War...

There it is. The quote from H. G. Wells is "And strangest of all is to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead." And where's that copy of Larklight from the library... there. Direct quote from the... actually it is the last chapter, it's just that the epilogue is rather long, "... and it felt very strange indeed to think that we had counted here ,and she had counted us, among the dead." And it feels so cool to be able to get those allusions as soon as you read them.

Another example. There's the very obvious reference to Catch-22 in Mr. Pratchett's The Last Hero, where Rincewind says, "I think there's a catch there," and Vetinari replies, "Oh yes. The best kind there is." And the first time I read that book, I didn't get it, but I recently borrowed it and reread it, and so many things popped out at me that I understand now... and of course the parody of "Oh my gosh, it's full of stars!" from 2001, the modified version being, "Oh my gosh, it's full of elephants!"

So it is of course not worthless to read literature. =D I'm currently reading The Golden Compass because I've heard the name "His Dark Materials" several times but I never remember where but it seems to be something I oughta read...

Oh yeah, and also The Fox and the Hound, though that doesn't tend to get many allusions, as there aren't any specifically memorable lines.

There are just some well-known and much referenced things that you oughta read, just because, you know what I'm saying?

It really is nice to know that it's useful.