Reading “Interlibrary Loan” (where I used to work, so I couldn’t resist), the last novel by Gene Wolfe, who died last year. The premise is that in the future authors can be borrowed from the library in the form of clones, the way you would borrow a book. It’s a whimsical science-fiction mystery.

Fellow librarian here (I’ve got an action figure of Nancy Pearl!). Re. her advice on choosing a book based on how much conversation there is: this is fine if you’re looking for a quick read, on vacation or on the plane, but when I open a book and see pages of conversation instead of prose it is too often a sign of…

Madame Curie (sic) is an old friend to me — I read a biography of hersome sixty years ago when I was 10, in the Landmark Signature series, followed by the biography by her daughter Eve. It introduced me to Polish history as well as the struggles of starving college students and physics researchers. While reading…

Seconded on language learning. Even with a couple of semesters of Portuguese I found I could understand about half of what people said, which meant I couldn’t understand the other half. Sadly, I found this true with French, which I was far more familiar with. Grammar study is no substitute for aural comprehension.…

I never watched Mythbusters or Glee and so never saw Grant or Naya Rivera, but I am still very saddened by the deaths of these two: by all accounts, lovely people in their prime. As it happens, my son-in-law’s younger brother died last week, presumably by his own hand.

Seriously, though, you can see why ancient people worshipped bears as god-men.

I’ve posted earlier about my own boating disaster, and I want to stress that a life jacket is strictly speaking termed a “personal flotation device” (PFD), because it enables you to float but is not guaranteed to save your life. Since we were canoeing in semi-wilderness I was glad that we had received some training in…

I used to go canoeing in Quebec with my husband and child. We always wore our life jackets and registered with the Reserve officials so they would know where we were going and what day we expected to return, but it was still so remote that we might travel 5-6 days without seeing anyone else, well outside the range of…

I have no idea whether he actually has a mental illness, I hope not, but it is still very sad when someone hugely successful and talented disintegrates into a mess — viz. Britney Spears, Val Kilmer, the list is longer than my arm. If you don’t want to see him enabled, don’t write about him. That’s what got us into our…

As it was then, so it is now: a difference of opinion, an optical illusion of perspective. A bad decision by two people? Obviously. A bad decision by someone who was supposed to know better? Very obviously. I recall having an instinctive attraction to two of my daughter’s male friends, one sixteen, and a flirtatious yo…

The problem with singing “Imagine” is that the music is dreary, the lyrics are trite and obvious, and the tune is terrible. This is coming from a passionate lover of John Lennon (in my own mind).

There was a truly fascinating program on “Coming Out” on PBS some years ago. It followed the daughter of a wealthy Texan (where else?) as she prepared for her ball. A sort of matchmaker found escorts for the debutantes, some recruited from the military. These young officers, or they might have been from the military…

While the trial was going on, fall of 1969, I heard Abbie Hoffman speak in Pittsburgh. It was supposed to be Rennie Davis, a co-defendant (Hoffman said, “I’d never met some of them until the trial, that’s how much of a conspiracy it was.”), but he had to testify the next day so they got Abbie instead. A couple of…

I saw this when it came out, at a time when both my mother and my husband were at the end of their lives. At the scenes where a mother serves tea to her daughter from a silver teapot (so like my mother), and the old lady returns from a walk, meets with the interviewers and wordlessly brings out from her pockets oak …

What he/she said. If you don’t have access to a ziplock bag, wrap the bottle(s) firmly in one or two plastic shopping bags.

There have been several historial studies of this phenomenon, including “The Steal: a cultural history of shoplifting” by Rachel Shteir, as well as a history of amateur shoplifters, “When Ladies Go a-Thieving: middle-class shoplifters in the Victorian departmental store” (Elaine Abelson, Oxford U. Press), which looks…

Good God, we should all be in that shape at 79. For that matter, let’s hope we even make it to 79. No wonder he’s not at the briefings all the time, he’s probably trying to get some sleep. Ad multos annos! [Many more years to come!]

He always struck me as classy, with a touch of country-folk to his music. Maybe it was the West Virginia heritage, maybe not. Some tunes I would love to have at a wedding reception.

Went to the public library to return a DVD of The Good Wife: closed for a month. Went to see “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” at the local art cinema: the next day the theatre closed for the next 4 weeks. The movie is very good, by the way, quiet, and almost entirely comprised of female characters. Very much a woman’s…

I tuned in late (after finishing the season finale of “The New Pope”), so came into the middle of Janice’s life story which I can certainly relate to. However, I’ll be 70 this year and I’m definitely not an old lady!