We have a good friend—I won’t “out” her here—who’s writing a romance novel just because she can. Having the published work on their coffee table will certainly be a conversation starter. (She’s already had some explaining to do when friends and family saw examples of the genre lying around their house half-read.) I have to […]
Posted on December 21st, 2004 by Nils
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Men and poetry don’t mix. Never mind that this is historically untrue, as Douglas Jones pointed out several years ago in his “Poetics” column in Credenda/Agenda.
In previous millennia, poetry was overwhelmingly a male passion. Your manhood would have been questioned if you did not share in the longing for a metrical weave of words. But […]
Posted on December 9th, 2004 by Nils
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I may have contributed to the delinquency of a minor. Not just any minor, but two of my own sons. I recently read the folktale “Stone Soup” to the older kids. Let’s be frank: this story is an effective way to teach youngsters the Spanish prisoner confidence trick. Now, it’s no secret that I happen […]
Posted on November 18th, 2004 by Nils
Filed under: culture, current events, humor, links, news, writing & books | 1 Comment »
What she said in her interview last year was apparently true: Jhumpa Lahiri has been writing short stories again. “Hell-Heaven” was printed in The New Yorker in May. I recommend it.
† From a bad movie that I’m ashamed to admit I paid to see more than once. There wasn’t much for a teenager to do at […]
Posted on October 29th, 2004 by Nils
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I was incensed, it’s true. The quote that got me blogging today is from Her Majesty Teresa Heinz Kerry.
USA Today: You’d be different from Laura Bush?
Teresa Heinz Kerry: Well, you know, I don’t know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I […]
Posted on October 26th, 2004 by Araceli
Filed under: blogging, culture, current events, links, writing & books | 2 Comments »
I just got a chance to take a look at this month’s issue of our favorite magazine that arrived in the mail today. I did a victory dance around the room when I saw my name in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly. Twice!
This is the closest to a classy byline as I get, best-selling […]
Posted on September 8th, 2004 by Nils
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I’ve been keeping an Amazon.com package unopened for about a week because I thought it was a Fathers’ Day gift from Araceli. Today I opened it. It was an item from my wish list, but it was not from my wife. Some nice person in San Francisco, whose name does not ring a bell, decided […]
Posted on June 20th, 2004 by Nils
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My brother-in-law, Tom, recently sent me a New Yorker review of a book entitled The Paradox of Choice. (Ironically, I didn’t run across this review on my own because, as Greg said during a conversation we had over dinner this week, I prefer The Atlantic to The New Yorker because it comes out less frequently—there’s […]
Posted on April 29th, 2004 by Nils
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Oh yes. Christopher Buckley’s fictional man-about-town, Rick Renard, is back. Unfortunately, we can’t read about his latest misadventures among the rich and infamous until the April issue of The Atlantic comes out.
Posted on March 4th, 2004 by Nils
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I was standing at a downtown traffic light this morning when I noticed that the person standing next to me had a book under her arm. The title: Clinical Pharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple.
It’s comforting to know that publishers are doing their part to make sure that a medical degree is not out of reach for […]
Posted on March 3rd, 2004 by Nils
Filed under: culture, humor, writing & books | 1 Comment »
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