busy busy busy
My sister blew into town last week for my birthday (she’s the taller, blonder one) and we did much walking around LA, particularly from one happy hour to the next….
Blog Archives
Book review and quotage
My review of Jonathan Ames’ The Double Life is Twice As Good is in today’s LA Times books pages. The book is not so great, and I couldn’t help but…
The view from there
The fourth of July BBQ I could walk to was too good to pass up. At not quite two miles away, and up a dusty trail through a park, many…
What Malcolm Gladwell gets wrong about Free
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s Free in this week’s New Yorker — I wrote about the dust-up surrounding uncredited passages in the book and what the implications of Anderson’s error…
Nietzche in the morning
Shortly after getting up I checked my Twitter feed — a weakness, to be sure — and saw that Alain de Botton was Tweeting quotes about anger. Here’s one: Angry…
A preamble of sorts
I’ve been puzzled by exactly what to do here on my personal blog. I used to write about books, but now I write about books on Jacket Copy. I write…
Mister Eric Bogosian
The first thing I learned upon meeting Eric Bogosian is that for years I have been mispronouncing his name (it is not boh-goh-zee-ann). Then I learned many other things, after…
Tonight at Vroman’s: Ben Greenman
Ben Greenman, who I get to needle and prompt at Vroman’s tonight, is on book tour for his new novel “Please Step Back.” And to let the world know what…
Festival, schmestival. Don’t miss Vroman’s on Tuesday
I love me some LA times festival of books. I’ve been soaking in it all day, and I think the panels will be great, the stages, the crazy big campus,…
Where’s a linguist when you need one?
In response to the controversy over de-ranking of more than 57,000 books on its site, Amazon released an unusual statement today. The online bookseller’s initial response to critics crying #amazonfail…
