I watch enough “vintage” movies and television that I find myself thinking about bygone customs and technology a lot — like how writers will contrive to have characters overhear phone messages not meant for them, …

Hey, remember the Ask The Readers book I put you guys onto in July, about the kid with the glider and the school play?   I ordered a copy from Half.com and re-read it in …

I just said a mouthful!
An odd and an end first: 1) my review of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days is up on Monkey See — great read, as usz (Kinney, not …

First: $15,280 as of this writing.   That’s 10% of our initial goal.   In…about a day.   I would tell you that I can’t believe it, but I totally can.   Outstanding work, guys.
Second: …

Works of Edith Wharton does not contain all of Wharton’s works — to fit the novels and the gardening/architecture stuff and the erotica and the letters and all the other “and”s into one volume obviously …

My piece for Monkey See on The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter, and the frustrations of being a currency nerd.   The short version: it’s a good book; I spend …

Reader Amalie is putting together a collection of plays and one-acts for performances affiliated with the Berkeley, CA Public Library — including a few of the Famous Ghost Monologues.   (Mary Charles McCormack, Mary Katherine …

The hilarious cover art and dryly blunt title got my hopes up — in vain, alas.   The writing is not awful, but Shelley Klein can’t decide if she’s going to report these cases straight, …

Typhus, the Brooklyn Dodgers of Flatbush, lesser Kennedys, seminal animé (say that five times fast), Argentine nutbars, and cod on the Cape — plus the N Cereal AA and the fall contest.These stories and more, …

Today the bat was still there.Someone had neatly laid a strip of toilet paper over it.It was dead, its position unchanged.I left it there and did not use the sink, not out of disgust or …