“The fact is, these widespread efforts to challenge and ban Lawn Boy have only driven sales and raised awareness of the book. So, what are the book banners actually accomplishing?” —Jonathan Evison, “My Life in Book Banning,” Poets & Writers, Sept/Oct 2022 Despite some disturbing hate mail, the challenging of Jonathan Evison’s novel Lawn Boy might not have been such...
“No one is immune from acting differently with someone positioned higher than himself than with someone situated lower. The whole world depends on this dynamic, and this hierarchy is deeply ingrained in men.” —Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob When I was younger, I had a philosophy that I should treat everyone equally and assume that everyone was basically the...
“Luck is such an interesting concept. Personally, I think you have to work very hard to be lucky. But even then you have to be lucky.” —Betsy Lerner, from her blog post You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are Boy In other words, you can have hard work without luck, but you can’t have luck without hard work. You can...
“For women are to a considerable extent slaves of this world, knowing nothing of their freedom, having not been taught how to be free.” —Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob What a statement. Bowled me over when I read it. But is it true? The novel it comes from is set in eighteenth-century eastern Europe. Certainly women were not taught...
I love this wisdom from a novel I am currently reading: “There are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out...
I love browsing brick-and-mortar bookstores, especially indie ones. It’s great to move through the cute spaces and notice which books are featured on tables, aisle ends, and face-front on shelves, and which are tucked away unobtrusively, lined up with a bunch of others. It’s great to see the staff picks to learn which books others have loved. There are the...
I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one. Is nother a word? The answer is YES! Nevertheless, I was surprised to see it in a novel I was recently reading. I have long thought that nother should be a word. I use it in speech regularly. Instead of saying “a whole other,” I tend to say “a...
HOW . . . DEE . . . DOO . . . DAH . . . and welcome your Santa pants to the . . . . . . 3rd Annual Christmas Rant!!!!!!!!! Can you believe it’s been two years since the inaugural Christmas Rant, which was a hoot an’ a half?! Can you believe it’s been a whole year...
For years, I have been hearing stories about people who have gained health benefits—even miraculous, lifesaving ones—from going gluten free. I am now one of those people. As I explained in a previous post, my neurologist told me that I have a rare medical condition causing post-concussion syndrome, including the occurrence of severe setbacks that were making it impossible for...
After almost two years of suffering, I finally have a diagnosis and a treatment protocol! My neurologist did an extensive review of my medical history. He determined that I have a rare medical condition that doesn’t have a name (other than the catchall term of post-concussion syndrome) and is poorly understood. Here is my attempt at describing his diagnosis of...
“It’s guys like you, Mickey!” Just another compliment for “fine” and “pretty” Mickey from the hit 1981 song “Mickey” by Toni Basil, . . . right? Mickey certainly gets a slew of compliments in the song. He’s pretty and fine, and he blows the narrator’s mind. She pleads with him not to break her heart. She wants him to take...
Things are frustrating on the concussion front. It’s been almost two years since the original injury, but my progress has been like the stock market . . . when it’s plunging. I have made gains in my ability to understand myself and what my triggers are. That’s helpful at least. But it’s complicated stuff, monitoring everything I do, trying to...
Every once in a while, The New Yorker publishes a series of little vignettes, often by famous authors. Each vignette tells a story about the writer’s life. These are true stories on a theme, . . . and these little pieces often pack a large punch. My favorite vignette from a recent issue is called Lone Star, by David Wright...
I embedded a joke—or anyway, my idea of a joke—into my blog post 20 Common Spelling Mistakes in English. Did you catch it? A total of zero people contacted me saying they got the joke. So now I’m wondering, are people not realizing I’m joking? Or maybe no one caught it. Or maybe no one said anything. Because why would...
As an editor, I see spelling mistakes everywhere. I thought I’d compile a list of the correct version of 20 common spelling mistakes in English that I often notice while out on the town or peering at a screen. Hopefully, this list can serve as a reminder to folks about how to be correct in spelling some of the trickier...
Something sad and horrific happened last weekend. A fox killed four of my five hens. I gave the fifth hen, Leslie, who survived, away to a friend who keeps chickens. Now I wake every morning to an empty coop. Oh, it’s awful. But chickens die. They have short lives, compared to dogs and cats (and humans). And I have never...
I read a short book, long ago, by a man in or nearing retirement. The man had made a life out of studying literature. This is my recollection, anyway. It was so long ago that I no longer remember the title or author of the book. I think the author was affiliated with the University of Michigan, but this could...
The great David Foster Wallace went on a mini-rant about this topic somewhere. And he’s right. In common parlance, people regularly fail to use the term “beg the question” correctly. The meaning of “beg the question” is not generally known. I myself did not know it, until I was informed of it by the great DFW. But now I know....
Our culture is so weird. I was listening to the radio, and the DJ, in a peppy voice, said something like, “This is such-and-such station, and here’s some music for your workday!” Immediately thereafter, they played a song about a woman who gets so pissed at her philandering boyfriend that she goes psychopath on his swanky, upscale vehicle—totally destroys the...
How are modern widows handling the multifaceted challenges of reentering the dating scene and finding love anew? Two co-authors recently researched this question. They discovered that modern widows are approaching the process of finding love in uniquely modern ways. Their book, Finding Love After Loss: A Relationship Roadmap for Widows, by Marti Benedetti and Mary A. Dempsey, will be released...
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Lapvona Ottessa Moshfegh
Empire of Pain Patrick Radden Keefe
Furious Hours Casey Cep
First Person Singular Haruki Murakami
Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro
Dead Souls Sam Riviere
The Pale King David Foster Wallace
Lightning Flowers Katherine E. Standefer
Beautiful World, Where Are You / Normal People / Conversations With Friends Sally Rooney
Swan Dive Georgina Pazcoguin
A Passage North Anuk Arudpragasam
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Projections Karl Deisseroth
The Indian Lawyer James Welch
Atomic Habits James Clear
The History of Philosophy A. C. Grayling
Dusk, Night, Dawn Anne Lamott
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
Nothing to See Here Kevin Wilson
Change Damon Centola
Homeland Elegies Ayad Akhtar
Becoming Attached Robert Karen
Piranesi Susanna Clarke
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
Solitary Albert Woodfox
Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo
Enlightenment by Trial and Error Jay Michaelson
Death in Her Hands Ottessa Moshfegh
The Cooking Gene Michael W. Twitty
The First Bad Man Miranda July
Upheaval Jared Diamond
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
Creatures Crissy Van Meter
Indelicacy Amina Cain
Say What You Mean Oren Jay Sofer
Habits of a Happy Brain Loretta Graziano Breuning
Bad Behavior, This Is Pleasure Mary Gaitskill
The Brother Gardeners Andrea Wulf
Severance Ling Ma
How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi
The Museum of Modern Love Heather Rose
Why I Write George Orwell
The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir
Educated Tara Westover
The Gift Hafiz
The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang
Your Duck Is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Milkman Anna Burns
Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer
Waiting for Bojangles Olivier Bourdeaut
A Mind Unraveled Kurt Eichenwald
Eugénie Grandet Honoré de Balzac
The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
The Bookshop Penelope Fitzgerald
Digital Minimalism Cal Newport
The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt
Dare to Lead Brené Brown
My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh
Almost Everything Anne Lamott
Born to Run Christopher McDougall, Bruce Springsteen
The Ladies’ Paradise Émile Zola
The World Beyond Your Head Matthew B. Crawford
All the Birds, Singing Evie Wyld
Barracoon Zora Neale Hurston
Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury
JavaScript & jQuery Jon Duckett
Home Fire Kamila Shamsie
The Weather Detective Peter Wohlleben
Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson
Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata
Perfect Me Heather Widdows
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Patty Yumi Cottrell
Why Buddhism Is True Robert Wright
What Is Real? Adam Becker
Kudos Rachel Cusk
The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante
F*cked Corinne Fisher & Krystyna Hutchinson
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Alan Lightman
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
Empire of Pain Patrick Radden Keefe
Furious Hours Casey Cep
First Person Singular Haruki Murakami
Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro
Dead Souls Sam Riviere
The Pale King David Foster Wallace
Lightning Flowers Katherine E. Standefer
Beautiful World, Where Are You / Normal People / Conversations With Friends Sally Rooney
Swan Dive Georgina Pazcoguin
A Passage North Anuk Arudpragasam
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Projections Karl Deisseroth
The Indian Lawyer James Welch
Atomic Habits James Clear
The History of Philosophy A. C. Grayling
Dusk, Night, Dawn Anne Lamott
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
Nothing to See Here Kevin Wilson
Change Damon Centola
Homeland Elegies Ayad Akhtar
Becoming Attached Robert Karen
Piranesi Susanna Clarke
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
Solitary Albert Woodfox
Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo
Enlightenment by Trial and Error Jay Michaelson
Death in Her Hands Ottessa Moshfegh
The Cooking Gene Michael W. Twitty
The First Bad Man Miranda July
Upheaval Jared Diamond
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
Creatures Crissy Van Meter
Indelicacy Amina Cain
Say What You Mean Oren Jay Sofer
Habits of a Happy Brain Loretta Graziano Breuning
Bad Behavior, This Is Pleasure Mary Gaitskill
The Brother Gardeners Andrea Wulf
Severance Ling Ma
How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi
The Museum of Modern Love Heather Rose
Why I Write George Orwell
The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir
Educated Tara Westover
The Gift Hafiz
The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang
Your Duck Is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Milkman Anna Burns
Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer
Waiting for Bojangles Olivier Bourdeaut
A Mind Unraveled Kurt Eichenwald
Eugénie Grandet Honoré de Balzac
The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
The Bookshop Penelope Fitzgerald
Digital Minimalism Cal Newport
The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt
Dare to Lead Brené Brown
My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh
Almost Everything Anne Lamott
Born to Run Christopher McDougall, Bruce Springsteen
The Ladies’ Paradise Émile Zola
The World Beyond Your Head Matthew B. Crawford
All the Birds, Singing Evie Wyld
Barracoon Zora Neale Hurston
Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury
JavaScript & jQuery Jon Duckett
Home Fire Kamila Shamsie
The Weather Detective Peter Wohlleben
Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson
Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata
Perfect Me Heather Widdows
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Patty Yumi Cottrell
Why Buddhism Is True Robert Wright
What Is Real? Adam Becker
Kudos Rachel Cusk
The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante
F*cked Corinne Fisher & Krystyna Hutchinson
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Alan Lightman
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
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