Is it us, or do a lot of this week’s new ideas seem off? Normally, we can get excited about something over the course of seven days. Nothing’s grabbing us. See, we like the idea of making book awards more of an event, more prominent, more…well, popular, but somehow using the People’s Choice Awards as a model doesn’t quite work for us. Maybe this is one of those concepts that needs to gestate in our brain for a few days. However, we are working with our new positive attitude this week (hmm, coincidence? Possibly not.), and will say that we […]

We love science — especially when it tries to explain art. And only a man would come up with a cockamamie (ha!) reason for why a statue seems to be less-than-endowed. Yeah, he was scared. Sure. And the moon is made of blue cheese. Anyone ever heard of anatomically correct? Was David scared stiff of Goliath?

Okay, so we don’t have a poetic mind. Sue us. We know we can’t do this article on the London Library justice, and we’re not going to try. You can read it for yourself. It will do your heart some good. Literary culture as we have known it and understood it since scribes were writing on papyrus is not the bonus of civilisation but intrinsic to civilisation itself, and the printed book, mysteriously, is the form that turns out to be irreplaceable. In the great libraries or the bookshelf at home, knowledge roots itself and imagination flowers. The availability of

Though it will not come as a surprise to anyone here, it seems that living with a writer is not easy. Honestly, sometimes the husband wants to talk when it’s quite clear we’re thinking. Oh sure, it looks like napping, but as long as one brain cell is pulsing, we will deny the charge. We will say, however, that every review we read about Living With a Writer gives us pause. First off, we know a lot of writers and very few are able to indulge their inner helpless child. Maybe it’s because so many of the writers we know

Now, don’t get us wrong, we like having far too much information. If we’re overwhwelmed by a subject, we’re happy (generally, because this means we’re so busy “researching” that we’re not “working”). But, let’s be honest — it’s hard enough getting people to put alt attributes on images. How can anyone expect articles filled with context-driven messages? And what happens when someone goes overboard and every conjunction has a context menu? Yes, the web can be used to provide endless avenues of discovery, but, maybe it’s the print reader in us or our natural crankiness, but there’s a point where

Let us be upfront about this: we are perfectly willing to accept a genius grant. Just recently, the husband realized the truth about us — we were born to be showered in gifts. We will not say how many years it’s taken him to come to this conclusion. Suffice to say, more than a few. So if the MacArthur people want to help us fulfill our destiny, we are available. That being said, we realize our particular genius cannot be cajoled by mere money (oh, don’t get us wrong…we are mercenary to the soles of our little feet). We were

It is a rare human who finds their calling at a young age. Usually the ones who do are seduced by the freedom that comes from driving a garbage or fire truck. Generally, this urge is outgrown about the time said person discovers girls (or boys). Some, however, never waver from their vision of the future. We salute that steadfast nature. Also, we worry. With clear eyes and an unquenchable thirst for syntactical truth, I will distinguish between defining and non-defining relative clauses and use “that” and “which” appropriately. I will locate and remove the hyphen from any mention of