Magnificent Octopus

So yesterday, yesterday an urge came over me, an urge to buy a record album (do people buy those anymore? a CD? what if you download it, wha...

We are all of us pressed against the metro door. I am between a bongo-playing bongo player, with his bongo, and a robe-wearing, Krishna-read...

So at some point, about a week ago, I was ready to say this is an awesome book, this Infinite Jest , and while I spent much of the first cou...

Margaret Atwood has a new book coming out in a few weeks, The Year of the Flood , the website for which launched this weekend. The new nove...

Bedtime is a confessional state. Individuals praying to their Gods. Between lovers. For Helena when I tuck her in. "You know how some b...

I am finally on schedule and, according to the page count set out at Infinite Summer , 52.something% of the way through Infinite Jest , and ...

Today Helena plucked one ripe little tomato off its vine — the first of the season — and popped it in her mouth. Her face radiated with exqu...

Hamlet! Words, words, words: It don't get classier than this. Me love Danish!

So I've been trying to read a poem here and there, to keep my mind, my life, you know, poetic and all, and I have this volume of Janusz...

It's absolutely feral. Of a feral imagination is Infinite Jest . Listed in the filmography in endnote 24 (p 991, referenced from p 64): ...

I particularly like Helena's hair when done up — braided to crown her — in the fashion of a medieval princess, and I tell her so. She ta...

I've taken quite a break from 2666 , to break away from all the rotten death of part 4 (The Part About the Crimes), and just to be able ...

It occurred to him suddenly that she might even get up and leave him, go back to Snow's with her secret for the first comer who question...

"I suppose I shall have to tell you," I said slowly. "I'm not ashamed of it. You can't be ashamed of something that j...

It's been some time since I read part 2 of Roberto Bolaño's 2666 (I'm near the end of part 4, and reading some books alongside ...

It's a disconcerting feeling to watch the blue arrow leave the road, the only road, on the GPS, watch the road drop out of the bottom of...

The Angel's Game , by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, is already destined to be a bestseller — it doesn't need my help in the slightest. You shou...

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...