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!

Black Dahlia Avenger
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Usually it’s the case with true-crime books that the story is compelling, but the writing is crap.   This one’s the other way around — a well-written book that is nonetheless some of the least …

Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Aw.   So cute, and so funny!   Coco is my favorite, with her teeeeeeny little tiara.   (3/29/04)

A Big Life In Advertising
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Mary Wells Lawrence is so full of herself that it’s a wonder she hasn’t exploded, and the prose is the kind of forced-dizzy hostessy gushing I ordinarily hate, but it works — it’s a fast, …

The Best American Sports Writing 2005
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I don’t like Lupica’s writing, but he selected great stories for this collection.   The Rayna DuBose article is enormously affecting.   (1/20/06)

The Best American Crime Writing
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

An excellent overview; if you like higher-end true-crime writing, I highly recommend it. (10/29/03)

Baseball: Four Decades of Sports Illustrated’s Finest Writing on America’s Favorite Pastime
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

For a collection of this type, a lot of the writing is flat, and the essay on the ’91 Series is overwrought; it’s a strange selection, I think.   Mickey Mantle, sure.   ’86 postseason, …

The Bad Guys Won
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Okay, as excellent as some of the inside scoop is — and you really can’t beat Calvin Schiraldi bitching, almost twenty years after that fateful World Series, “Gary Carter can suck my ass” — the …

The Bad Beginning
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The first Lemony Snicket.   It’s a good, fast read, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with the others.   I love Sunny, though.   (4/26/04)

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I wanted to like this more than I did.   The writing is good; it’s not uninteresting, it’s not slow anywhere, it’s not a prose problem.   It’s a relatability problem, not because I grew …

The Anatomy of Motive
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Good for true-crime junkies, without as much of the self-promotion Douglas tends to indulge in elsewhere — with the exception of The Cases That Haunt Us, which I highly recommend, I’ve found his other books …