Category Archives: Uncategorized

So much as I deplore how we’ve devolved in this Gadget Age, I’m as bad as anyone with a new toy. For my birthday my wife gave me a Sony Cybershot—small and light, 16 megapixel pics, easy and quick to … Continue reading →

I recently finished Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn (2009) and rank it as one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in the last few years. His analysis of the fight between conservative and progressive politics of the era, which … Continue reading →

So did many people read this Op-Ed by Michael Chabon in the New York Times last weekend? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/opinion/06chabon.html?pagewanted=1&hp I like Chabon’s fiction, though I usually don’t go out of my way to read it. He often comes across as rather … Continue reading →

So it took me a while to get around to watching The Road (2009), partly because I knew it would be a grim experience. The novel is one of the few books that count as a masterpiece of the 21st … Continue reading →

A full moon hung in the sky over Moab, Utah the other night, framed by a few puffy, cartoon clouds. We’d spent the day looking at dinosaur tracks. My daughter, Lili, looked up and said that dinosaurs were sleeping in … Continue reading →

So this weekend I caught Noah Baumbach’s new film Greenberg in a St. Louis theater, the day after I rewatched the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, which is better, true, but also not really a fair comparison, because who can … Continue reading →

For years now I’ve been curious about the phenomenon/topic/fringe idea of Peak Oil, basically the warning that we will soon reach the peak of oil production: once it’s peaked, it’s only a matter of time before supplies start to dwindle, … Continue reading →

I’m in the mood for some good reading right now, have pegged a few titles for summer reading out of sheer curiosity, and while casting a wary eye at the Summer Movies list, it’s a pleasant surprise to see this … Continue reading →

Why is it that the giddiest rave reviews often somehow make their books sound suspect? I note this just having read Christopher Buckley’s rave of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists in todays NY Times. The book does sound fun, but the … Continue reading →

Here’s a url to my review of Jake Silverstein’s book of fiction/nonfiction, Nothing Happened and Then It Did, reviewed in today’s Dallas Morning News. Parts of it were funny, in an absurdist vein, such as the bad poet’s convention, and … Continue reading →