When it’s hot and you have no air conditioning, I recommend four things: cold showers, oscillating fans, liquor in the freezer, and ghost stories, the kind where people are constantly exhaling clouds of icy vapor. Not aliens, vampires, serial killers, werewolves, or plagues–it’s got to be ghost stories. If it isn’t common wisdom yet, it […]
Continue reading →Comfort reading constitutes the books you pick up or re-read to soothe yourself. They may contribute to your intellectual development or ability to conduct a thrilling high-stakes debate with an Internet troll or they may not, but their primary purpose is to allow your mind to swath itself in a compelling and relaxing alternate world […]
Continue reading →This list is not exactly vacation book recommendations; it’s the books I read during my vacation the second week of June. I visited the East coast and spent a week with my mother in New Hampshire, where I did a lot of reading. Here are the books that I read, in order: 1. Bridge of […]
Continue reading →Chuck and I visited Portland recently and while browsing at Powell’s I saw Casebook, a new book by Mona Simpson. I try not to buy too many books in hardback; I can’t afford it, plus I don’t have the space for them. But there are some authors I must have immediately, and Mona Simpson is […]
Continue reading →I am not a Yankee by nature, given my third-generation immigrant heritage, but I consider myself a Yankee by nurture, in that I’ve lived most of my life in Connecticut or Massachusetts, I talk fast, and I’m not real friendly. I grew up hearing about the Pilgrims and the Revolutionary War. I thought everybody knew […]
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