Despite having multiple viewpoint characters (a practice I’m not usually fond of), Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is both absorbing and easy to read. It is definitely the sort of book where you should not read reviews ahead of time,… Read More ›
Month: January 2025
Abigail: A better photo
Abigail complained that the photo I posted a few days ago did not make it clear that she is a beautiful princess, so I took a better picture right now while she sat on her royal purple blanket:
Welcome to your forever home, Abigail!
Five days ago, timid little Abigail met us at MSPCA/Angell and agreed to adopt us. From an all-time high of six cats to a low of one cat, we had now been completely catless for nearly three months at that… Read More ›
Overboard
Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series has been going on forever — or so it seems. Actually it’s been 43 years now, but that’s practically forever in the publishing world. After reading the earliest dozen or two, I started to get… Read More ›
A close-up view of Neighborhood #3, The ’Burbs
This month’s exploration of my model railroad layout is our third look at an individual neighborhood of Rose City. Back in the 1940s some developers noticed that there was a lot of still undeveloped property just north of PowerTown. Clearly… Read More ›
Polostan
Of course I knew that I had to read Polostan as soon as I saw that the author was Neal Stephenson. His 19 previously published novels are all IMHO first-rate — ranging from 1984’s The Big U to 2021’s Termination… Read More ›
Dylan
Like Bob Dylan himself, the new biopic A Complete Unknown has generated a lot of controversy. So I had to go see it yesterday, sitting in a comfy seat in a Dorchester movie theatre surrounded by hundreds of Dylan fans…. Read More ›
Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish.
These days, if you just see the title, you probably worry that the song is going to be some antisemitic diatribe on X/Twitter. But 25 years ago that wouldn’t have been your first impression; you would correctly have thought that… Read More ›
What was the 2024 Word of the Year?
Time’s up! Now that 2024 is over, what do you think was the Word of the Year (WOTY)? Actually, there are many possibilities, largely because many different organizations determine their own answer to that question. But you should first ponder… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 