Sleep
February 13, 2025 · 10 Comments

Whether it’s a noun, plus what to read if you can’t.

Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

The Vine

The Vine: November 8, 2024
November 8, 2024 · 17 Comments

Hey. I don’t know what we do now either. I DO know that we’ll need each other going forward, as we always have, for support, mutual aid, and information on where to get high-quality wide-calf boots now that yours have gotten discontinued or tariffed out of existence.

Also cat pictures. Here’s one now!

Frankie "helping" with inventory
Frankie “helping”

This is Frankie, the current foster cat. As of this writing, he still needs a forever home, so head to @bookstorecats on Instagram to apply if you’re that home.

Also, I need short circular needles — by “short,” I mean both the loop and the points. I’d like to make some socks but I haaaaate DPNs and magic loop isn’t my favorite either. Agnostic on point material; wood or metal, both fine.

And if you want me to bring back Ask The Readers, at least for a while, send me YOUR questions about lost books, expediting a passport renewal, comfort TV, whether you should leave X (I can do that one right now: yep, do it today), you name it. bunting at tomatonation dot com for Qs; scroll down to the comments to A (and they’re moderated, so be cool).

Bonded Pairs
September 11, 2024 · 99 Comments
Bonded Pairs

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends a lot of time thinking about the lost or secret twin she must have – “must have” meaning surely has, but “must have” in the sense of “needs,” also – that mirror child who loves her, IS her, holds her hand always.

Local News
September 11, 2023 · 74 Comments
Local News

I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …

“To see the worst and make an account of it”
January 6, 2023 · 8 Comments
“To see the worst and make an account of it”

(David Denby on Norman Mailer’s wartime experiences)

Hey, folks. Just a quick periodic round-up of stuff I’ve gotten up to of late…I guess I could use Linktree but I’m still paying for hosting for TN, so: …

God Save Our Queens
September 11, 2022 · 68 Comments
God Save Our Queens

The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break. Sam Knight on Operation London Bridge

Monarchies want abolishing, …

Book Ends
September 10, 2021 · 100 Comments
Book Ends

Once upon a time, in the world before Tomato Nation, I worked in an antiquarian bookshop in Chelsea. I made seven dollars an hour. I learned how to “spine up” a shelf, tweaking the books …

Broken Bread
September 11, 2020 · 101 Comments
Broken Bread

Hello. It feels…quaint, nearly, doesn’t it, this thing we do each year together?

Who We Were
September 11, 2019 · 142 Comments
Who We Were

Sarahs Bunting past.

I was 28, no greys. I had two
cats, one grey. I lived, for a moment, in a loft in Toronto I was subletting
from a college friend. The cats have gone. They are also …

Holding The Line
September 10, 2018 · 90 Comments
Holding The Line

Last of a dying breed.

The Vine: June 19, 2018
June 19, 2018 · 15 Comments
The Vine: June 19, 2018

I had to give up my absolute favorite purse I have ever had.

Order Of The Shallows: French Open 2018
June 4, 2018 · 3 Comments
Order Of The Shallows: French Open 2018

Mais oui, we’re back at Roland Garros!