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 Real Lincoln
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The authorial editorializing bugged me, right up until the end; DiLorenzo’s tendency to clutch his pearls dilutes his arguments.   I will admit that I don’t particularly want to believe any of the evidence against …

Raw Deal: Horrible and Ironic Stories of Forgotten Americans
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The title pretty much says it all.   I love Ken Smith’s writing style, and it’s a super-fast read, really interesting (but kind of depressing at the same time; the Charles Goodyear chapter is so …

Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson
March 5, 2007 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 …