Garrison Keillor of Lake Woebegone and Prairie Home Companion fame, wrote a short article entitled “Of Vice and Men,” a memoir about his younger days of striving to be a writer. Guided by the belief that ,” A true artists must engage with dark forces,” (The Week, 10/3/12, pg.

I’m half way through The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve. It was one of my recent $1 finds. (See Blog 10/10/12) I picked it up because Oprah’s Book Club recommended it, though I don’t know why. I’ve always been disappointed by their choices. So far, my experience with Shreve’

Recently my face was on a billboard with a slogan that read: “I am a secularist and I vote.” I sent a photo of the sign to a friend in Canada, thinking she’d be amused. Instead, she emailed to ask if I wasn’t afraid to identify myself as an atheist. Given the rise in conservat

Meg Wolitzer, author of The Uncoupling, recently observed that one of the virtues of being disorganized is that in sorting through her piles of “stuff, ”she sometimes rediscovers unrelated lost treasures.” (“The Secret Delights of Disorder by Meg Wolitzer, More, 10/12, pg. 184

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, my publisher and I recently talked for over an hour about whether I should make some last minute changes in my upcoming novel, Trompe l’Oeil. She was concerned about the book’s complexity and whether or not I should give the reader more clues.

Recently, my publisher and I had a discussion about Rachel Farraday, the heroine of my upcoming novel, Trompe l’Oeil. She wondered if my character needed to be more assertive to satisfy the modern view of women. Where, she wondered, was the grittiness of Victorine Ellsworth, the sch

A friend sent me a book review from the Wall Street Journal the other day. It was for a new book by Alain de Botton with the jaw breaking title, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. Botton’s argument is that atheists should consider appropriating

I received a package in the mail yesterday. I wasn’t expecting anything, so I put my ear to it to listen for ticking sounds. Hearing none, I tore the wrapping and discovered a friend had sent me a book I’d wanted to read for some time: Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. Holt w

Several times I’ve gloated about finding a wonderful book for a $1, but the other day I received one for free. I met the author, Suzanne Jauchius, at a small gathering of writers where she introduced herself as a psychic. Her book, You Know Your Way Home, is memoir about the challen

To write that language is a tool by which we either clarify or dissemble is almost too obvious to proclaim. Still, to confuse one purpose with the other can produce high comedy. Recently the news wires carried a story about a poll printed in the Onion showing that Iran’s president,