In my last post I made an oblique (very oblique, it appears) reference to Vladimir Nabakov’s Pale Fire. Incidentally, Nabakov’s book is listed alongside 1000 others in a book telling us what we should read before we shuffle off this mortal coil.Some eager beaver has provided a list of the books recommended here.Many of the recent recommendations are slightly baffling, but none more so than number 84: The Talk of the Town, by Ardal O�Hanlon, who will always be Father Dougal.Now I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine book, for a standup comic. (I haven’t read it and I suspect I never will). But does it deserve to rub shoulders with, say, Anna Karenina or Brideshead Revisited?Than again, the critical consensus can often seem baffling. The New Yorker, for example, is again raving about the latest thick slice of stage-Oirish buffoonery from (Oscar-winner!) Martin McDonagh. I can’t help wondering that because such plays are set in the West of Ireland they are granted a respect they wouldn’t be granted if the locale was shifted to suburban Denver. Regardless–the whole premise–killing cats and psychotic provos torturing drug-dealers–seems, on the surface at least, rebarbatively inane.