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!

Home » Archive by Category

Articles in Culture and Criticism

Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson
March 5, 2007 – 2:18 AM | No Comment

My mom read me “The Lottery” one day when I stayed home sick from school; I’ll never forget it.   I thought it was the best story I’d ever heard in my life; I had …

Persepolis 2
March 5, 2007 – 2:17 AM | No Comment

I adored it.   Not quite as much as the first one, but I don’t think I adore any book as much as I do the first one, and as I did when I finished …

Persepolis
March 5, 2007 – 2:17 AM | No Comment

I love this book very very much.   It is lovely and funny and heartbreaking, and you should go find a copy and read it right now.   No, right now.

Permanent Midnight
March 5, 2007 – 2:16 AM | No Comment

Some of the prose is a little in love with itself, but justifiably; just when I start to get annoyed by the more anvilicious parallel-drawing, he’ll switch gears and evoke a scene so vividly that …

Outrage
March 5, 2007 – 2:16 AM | No Comment

Excellent;  Bugliosi is so forthright and bitchy about the mistakes the prosecution made, and so forceful in his condemnation of everyone involved in the OJ case, not least OJ, that it’s quite a thrilling read. …

One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal
March 5, 2007 – 2:15 AM | No Comment

Interesting, and well written, but the lecturing tone about “normate assumptions” et al. got old after awhile; she tends to slip into this mode where she’s chastising the reader for staring, but then in the …

O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors
March 5, 2007 – 2:15 AM | No Comment

It’s a collection, as you might imagine, of writings about movie actors, many of whom I hadn’t heard of; I skipped parts of it because I really didn’t care, and a lot of the writing …

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
March 5, 2007 – 2:15 AM | No Comment

It’s fascinating, and maddening, and disheartening, but very good, especially if you lived through girl-on-girl bullying yourself (which, who didn’t).   Some of Simmons’s terminology is a little new-agey for my taste, but that’s a …

October Men
March 5, 2007 – 2:14 AM | No Comment

I seem to remember enjoying Kahn’s baseball writing in the past — I know I read The Boys of Summer years ago — but this one is too fond of itself by half and goes …

NYPD: Stories of Survival from the World’s Toughest Beat
March 5, 2007 – 2:14 AM | No Comment

Can someone explain to me, please, how it is that pieces which previously appeared in reputable publications with copy editors then wind up riddled with typos in a compilation?   Argh.   It’s really hard …