Welcome to Week Two of a series we didn't intend to undertake: Tom and Mike Read Books They're Not Quite Smart Enough to Understand. Actually, we did a slightly better job with this one than we did with last week's reading, Jenny Boully's The Body. Though we can already hear the sound of 1,000 grad students rolling their eyes in response to our discussion of Barthes. But hey, we're giving it our best. We can't help it if there are rocks where our brains are supposed to be.

This week's book was a Mike pick, because he's been on the English department faculty of a major university for too long to not have read anything by Roland Barthes. A Lover's Discourse was billed as one of his more accessible works, so we figured it could make a good starting place. And it wasn't bad! At least the parts that we understood. Which were some of the parts!

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