“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.
From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.
Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.
Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.
The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
I can’t decide if I liked it or not. It’s well written and moves along, but I feel like a lot got left out — which is weird, given how much got left in. …
I liked the movie better, actually; Hinton’s narrators have a disingenuous way of talking about themselves that gets a bit irritating after a while, and it works better as film melodrama. Also, I used …
A sweet baseball reminiscence that could stand a tighter, cleaner edit — and unless you’re a Red Sox fan and/or you know a good deal about the game pre-1950, I don’t know that it’s the …
John Gregory Dunne’s dry prose is such a good fit with the movie industry; he’s really able to take the wind out of it, but without sounding bitter or mean. Good time capsule, good …
It’s meticulously researched, and some of the descriptions made me nauseated enough that I had to put the book down to read something else for a little while — but there’s still something irritating about …
The book is good — Styron’s prose is outstanding — but it’s too long; I like the movie better, because Styron does tend to get into sidebars that don’t feel necessary to the story, and …
The writing is both very precise and wildly overwrought, particularly the dialogue, which…my God, even a Lassie episode is closer to how kids really talk, and the father’s lengthy pontificating in the library was just …
Very sharp and funny, particularly the extremely dry and long overdue takedown of Susan Sontag. (9/8/03)
A lovely…what’s the term I want here? “Memoir of the transgender experience,” I guess. In any case, funny and touching in just the right balance, and beautifully written. (9/8/03)
The prose is a little bit clumsy, but if you like media studies, it’s a fab read in an election year. Grab a copy if you can. My newest favorite political joke: “I’d …