You know what happens when you sit on the couch all day, day after day, watching re-runs of Freinds and eating ice cream and Cheetos? Not a pretty picture is it? So why do you treat your intellect in a way that you would never treat your body? Read the books I recommend and in no time you will be an intelectual hottie!

These are just a few of the books I gaurantee will bulk-up your cultural biceps and give you a literary six-pack:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Comes with an extreme violence warning)

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinky (Ditto)

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (Comes with a sexual content warning)

Stoner by John Williams (Comes with the warning that you will love it so much you will want to force everyone you know to read it, which may make some people very annoyed with you because you are so insistent. Try to keep your cool.)

Embers by Sandor Marai

Underworld by Don DeLillo

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Check out my display of books (next to the Lazy Reader's picks - I think you'll know whose books are whose) for these and other titles to reading muscles burn!