In 1964, when Barry Goldwater was running for president, Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here came to my attention, so I promptly checked a copy out of the library and read it right away. In case you’ve never heard of… Read More ›
Books
Move to Strike
Partly a courtroom drama, partly a mystery, partly a suspense thriller, this novel by Perri O’Shaughnessy (a pseudonym for sisters Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy) is a great choice when you’re stuck at home, as most of us are right now…. Read More ›
Ἅρειος Ποτῆρ καὶ ἡ τοῦ Φιλοσόφου Λίθος
No cheating now: Based on the Greek letters that you’ve learned from math and science, can you figure out what the title of this post says? If you can’t figure out any complete words, try sounding them out. There are… Read More ›
Culling the herd (the herd of books, that is)
There’s no such thing as too many books. Well, maybe there is. I wrote about this problem in a blog post five months ago — at this point it feels like five years, of course — when I resolved to do something… Read More ›
What are your favorite poems?
What are your favorite poems? Is an epic poem too long to count as an answer to this question? I hope not — but I’ll play it safe and split the difference. My favorite pair of poems are… drumroll, please…… Read More ›
Freedom City
So Donald Trump dies from an apparent heart attack after taking hydroxychloroquine, and President Pence calls on far-right militias to enforce a “Make America Great Again” fascist-style government. OK, it’s fiction. More or less. My opening sentence is not quite… Read More ›
The Mechanic
I should have known. Months ago, back on May 4th — OK, OK, I know that it was really just two weeks ago, but it feels like months — I was watching Greater Boston on Channel 2, as one does, and Jim Braude was… Read More ›
The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe
Let’s see a show of hands: how many of you know who Nero Wolfe was? OK, fellow boomers, you can put your hands down now. We are the generation that knows Rex Stout. For the rest of you, I’ll tell… Read More ›
Apart-ment
You will want to read a longish poem just published by my favorite Canadian linguist, James Harbeck. Before then, note what he has to say about words: Words are delicious and intoxicating. They do much more than just denote; they have appearance,… Read More ›
Maxine Unleashes Doomsday
How could I resist a novel with a title like Maxine Unleashes Doomsday? The genre of this story, as you expect, is near-future post-apocalyptic science fiction — more or less. Apparently it was inspired by The Road Warrior, but I’ve never seen… Read More ›
Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother
Picture this: You’re Barry Sonnenfeld, a high-school junior, on a date with a classmate at a Madison Square Garden “Woodstock Reunion” concert. And just as Jimi Hendrix is about to come on, you hear an announcement over the loudspeaker: ”Barry… Read More ›
The Panda of Death
“Three murders? For a cozy? Isn’t that a lot?” Yes, three murders in one cozy. I guess that’s a lot. This self-referential quote is from Betty Webb’s latest, The Panda of Death. And yes, it’s a cozy, but I read it anyway,… Read More ›
A Very Stable Genius
As you know, the U.S. is currently being led by “a very stable genius,” as our dear leader calls himself. I finally finished reading A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, written by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters from… Read More ›
Don’t Believe a Word!
Do you want to get a serious look at linguistics from an author who writes clearly for a general audience? If so, read David Shariatmadari’s Don’t Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth about Language. When I say it’s for a general audience, you… Read More ›
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols
The perennial Sherlock Holmes strikes again! Nicholas Meyer, author of the famous The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, follows that up with another Holmes pastiche, this time with much more serious content: debunking the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion…. Read More ›
Tsundoku: The practice of buying more books than you can read
The Japanese have a word for it. According to Melissa Breyer, “tsundoku” describes piling up books to save for later… even if you’ll never actually read them. Thank you, Betsy Miessner, for this link. I don’t speak Japanese (despite a few… Read More ›
Can a man write a good novel? Or can only a woman do that?
I only read women. I know that men write books. But their lives are so limited. It’s such a small and narrow experience. That’s what famous author Marian Keyes says (in the Daily Mail of all places). It startles us in… Read More ›
Mathematics Galore!
The aims of a mathematics masterclass and of this book are to enthuse educate inspire challenge audiences of young people, their parents and teachers, with the wonder, excitement, power, beauty, and relevance of modern mathematical ideas. So it says in… Read More ›
How does the Washington Post know what you’re going to read and at what age you’ll read it?
Interesting post by one of my favorite novelists, Lev Raphael: “The Washington Post Claims To Know What You Read And When.” In case you decide not to read either Raphael’s post or the Washington Post column he describes, here is… Read More ›
“There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen, Louise Penny, and Michael Connelly have nothing to do with each other. Nothing obvious, at any rate. But there’s an important connection that all these artists share, embodied by the quotation in the title to this post, which… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 