Holy crap, the Barkley Marathons. That sounds horrible! I hadn't even heard of it but now I want to go watch that documentary.

"Empress Dowager Cixi" has been on my to-read list for a bit, but I've been waiting to get it on ebook so I don't have to carry around a tome. (Right now I have 340280489042 heavy paper books and 5 ebooks, heh. When I get home I am going to have to embark on an orgy of paper book reading.)