Recently I finished reading William Cohan’s non-fiction account called Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short. My motivation for choosing to read this book was simple. The author, his eponymous four friends, and I have something in common: we all graduated… Read More ›
Every four years like clockwork (assuming, that is, you have a strange clock with a rather vague sense of regularity*) Stephen Spotswood publishes another great novel in his Pentecost and Parker series. And now we’re on to number four: Murder… Read More ›
No, not a professional baseball player. OK, so how about Munsell—who’s that? And are/were they real, or are they fantasy? (Why am I asking these odd questions?) And how are Ishihara and Munsell related to regulations like the following? 2.1.01.05.002:… Read More ›
Apparently I’m the last person in the Western Hemisphere to learn who Vera is. Truly. That is because I watch so little television, and television is the main way in which Americans know Vera. But this post is about a… Read More ›
Actually, don’t wait until then! If you’re in your thirties or forties or whatever, read Michael Connelly’s Desert Star now…and then read it again when you’re in your seventies. It will be a different book. Of course if you’re already… Read More ›
No, not the movie by the same name. I’m talking about Tess Gerritsen’s excellent new Rizzoli and Isles novel. As you expect from a Rizzoli and Isles story, there is a medical angle to the plot of Listen to Me…. Read More ›
What does it remind you of? 1984? Fahrenheit 451? I don’t mean that people want to ban those particular books (though I’m sure they do); I mean that both of them are cautionary tales that remind you of the dangers… Read More ›
If you enjoy the English language, but aren’t a professional linguist, you will definitely enjoy this book. If you are sometimes, often, or (yikes) always a prescriptivist, but have an open mind, you’ll not only enjoy it but will also… Read More ›
IMHO, the claim in the overly long title to this post is correct. YMMV, of course. If you agree with my conclusion, the natural question is to ask why this should be so. Here we have two similar, occasionally even… Read More ›
What have we here? It’s apparently a new collection of short stories by Agatha Christie (who died 47 years ago). Something is amiss! Midsummer Mysteries, subtitled Tales from the Queen of Mystery, is indeed marketed as a new collection of… Read More ›
How, you’re probably wondering, could the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) possibly relate to a novel about Venice? OK, I admit that you’re probably wondering no such thing. But I’m going to tell you anyway. Of course water is the… Read More ›
Yes, it’s spelled “ukulele,” not “ukelele.” As those clickbait posts on Facebook would say, almost 90% of adults spell this word wrong! A second issue is not so easily resolved. Many of us like labels and taxonomies—not as a tool… Read More ›
As the third, most recent, and best-so-far novel in Stephen Spotswood’s great Pentecost and Parker series, Secrets Typed in Blood is an outstanding detective novel that takes place in the year of my birth. I reviewed the two previous books… Read More ›
“Teachers deserve better. They deserve more trust and respect, and less standardized testing, smaller class sizes, and yes, larger paychecks.” So says author Alexandra Robbins in The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession. A well-known long-time New… Read More ›
Yes. I know. How can I honestly say “best book of the year” when the year isn’t even half over yet? Furthermore, of course, I can judge only the books that I’ve read. So, let me rephrase. Of the 17… Read More ›
I have written about the fascinating author Helen DeWitt four times over the past eleven years: They say that third time is the charm, but what about the fifth time? Well, the verdict is mixed. DeWitt’s short story collection, Some… Read More ›
In her novel The Christie Caper, author Carolyn Hart pays explicit and implicit homage to Agatha Christie. As you would expect, she does it with panache. Clearly Hart loves and admires Christie. To enjoy this book you don’t need to… Read More ›
Don’t leave this book—Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide—lying around casually at work. Your boss might get the wrong idea. Now that it’s safely on your night table at home, or on the end table next to your… Read More ›
If you’ve read My Last Innocent Year, you quickly figured out that it’s meant to be Dartmouth, right? Yes, it’s subtly called Wilder College, but it’s described as an elite college in New Hampshire that used to be all male… Read More ›
That’s the title of a seven-episode podcast about the attacks on J.K. Rowling from both the left and the right—originally from the right but now mostly from the left. Personally I think that both groups of critics are wrongheaded and… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 