Walter Mosley's Top Literary Picks

This list might be enough to make your head hurt

(NEWSER) - Great books can bring great joy—and, in a few cases, great big headaches. Listverse compiles the 10 toughest reads in literature:

• Finnegans Wake, James Joyce: If you thought Joyce would ride his way onto this list compliments of Ulysses, think again. Written partially in a made-up language of mindbendingly convoluted puns, this novel is often considered unreadable.

Marx's treatise gets some much-needed singing and dancing

(NEWSER) - Karl Marx's Das Kapital offers hundreds of pages of dense German prose on class struggle and modes of production—so why not add some singing and dancing? That's the idea of several Chinese producers who are mounting a Das Kapital musical, which promises a live band and Vegas-style theatrics to liven up the communist's magnum opus. As the Guardian notes, the team will be adding a barebones plot to make the economic treatise stageworthy. More»

These guys have the most notable chin hairs in history

(NEWSER) - To celebrate the public premiere of Charles Darwin's beard (or at least hair from it his great, great grandson found in a small leather box) at the British Natural History Museum, the London Times lists the best all-time chin hairs:

1. Karl Marx. The collapse of the Soviet Union may have deflated his Communist Manifesto, but the richness of his beard remains.

As the economy founders, sales of Das Kapital soar

(NEWSER) - The financial crisis has made interventionists out of the most laissez-faire politicians, but in Germany the affection for state control seems to have attained new heights. The Guardian reports that sales of the works of Karl Marx have skyrocketed, with purchases of Das Kapital reportedly up 300%. As Europe's largest economy feels the pinch, one publisher said, "Marx is in fashion again." More»

From Hunter to Ayn, the Telegraph lists books you can 'wear like a leather jacket'

(NEWSER) - It’s hard to define the "cult" book, but the Telegraph compiled 50 of the top contenders that “rewire your head.”

• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
• Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)