Magnificent Octopus

Bedtime is altogether different with a new kitten in the house. For many weeks, Rosie has been confusing "bedtime" with "play...

I have a basket of strawberries hanging on my balcony. I am unreasonably excited about this. As a teenager, many summers I picked strawberri...

Last weekend the kid had another birthday party to attend, obliging us to drive out to the burbs and exchange pleasantries with other parent...

The rooms in which writers (that subspecies of readers) surround themselves with the materials they need for their work acquire an animal qu...

I've never really planned my summer reading before, but then, my child has never finished a school year before, so it happens that we...

On our walk to school in the morning, Helena very gravely tells me, "Mommy, you're my second -best friend now." I've been ...

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, li...

Last week I found a near-pristine copy of a 1974 editon of Words into Type . I paid $10, at Cheap Thrills . On December 27, 2004, someone bo...

I'm greatly enjoying Roberto Bolaño's 2666 . By sheer coincidence, of which I have the luxury, I stumbled upon a bloggers' discu...

Under the tulips. Rosie likes flowers.

More about The City & the City . Dislocation Miéville on the nature of the cities and the sense of dislocation that accompanies detectiv...

If all experience is more than the sum of its parts, is it in any way possible to reconstruct a semblance thereof by analyzing its constitue...

"Stick us to crowds," I told him. "And to crosshatching." More people, and where the two cities are close up they make f...

For some reason, likely sparked by a passage in 2666 , I find myself, as I'm treading the familiar path from the métro to my office, thi...

Eleanor Wachtel's interview with A.S. Byatt, recorded at the 11th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival , was broadca...

When they were alone, Ironside said, "I never thought this would be easy." "Sir, may I ask you a question?" "I wish...

Yesterday I forsook the company 5 à 7 for a book launch. The book is about a frog, and the launch was at my daughter's school. Robert So...

Last weekend, as my Facebook friends already know, I went out for groceries. But I came home with a kitten. I dragged the family out of the...

Today I was up at the crack of dawn making chicken soup from scratch. The smell of it followed me all day. My fingers like boiled carrots. L...

" It's a secret. " Washington Irving's old Dutch-style house: Sunnyside . She had spoken like a girl — it was impossible t...