Rupert Murdoch and I have something in common. I don’t really “get” Twitter. I have 33 followers on a good day, but they aren’t really following. They’re using my site as wallpaper to advertise their sites. We have no more to say to each other than if we were nomads stumblin

I walked to my neighborhood bookstore yesterday, the one that specializes in mysteries. I’d hoped to find a used copy of the latest Martha Grimes novel. I didn’t succeed, so I wandered over to the $1 shelf. Three titles caught my eye. One was by Patricia Cornwell, whom I’d disco

Lucille, a character from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, that classic exploration of power and money, shrugs when her expensive dress is torn at a party. “I never care what I do, so I always have a good time.” (3.23-25). Not caring seems to be the hallmark of som

A number of things make me happy though not all of them are good for me. Unlimited access to hot fudge sundaes would be one of these. So would lying on a sunny beach for hours, giving no thought to skin cancer. The one drawback of these delights is that they pertain only to me. But th

Old age comes to everyone, even the young, though the joke is the young don’t know it. They take youth for granted, which is why they have the luxury to complain they are “bored.” In a way, one of the gifts of age is seeing the end and having the good sense to relish the time th

Germaine Greer managed to put her foot in her mouth at the 1012 Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia. if I know anything about Greer – an outspoken leader of the Woman’s Rights Movement in England and author the famous, The Female Eunuch — she meant to do it. In a way, it

One normally doesn’t tout the quarterly edition of an alumni magazine as scintillating reading, but I’m often surprised by what I discover in mine. Nestled among the names of those who are working on PhDs, or writing books or having babies, or doing nothing because they have died,

I’ve been saving money from my sale of used books to buy a secondhand copy of Haruki Murakami’s latest tome, 1Q84. Originally the novel sold for over $30. I’ve saved $12 and hope I can find his masterpiece at a bargain price now that a year has passed since its publication. I ad

Hanna Rosin’s new book, The End of Men—and the Rise of Women predicts that within a generation women will rule the nation if not the world. (“Why Testosterone is the New Estrogen” excerpted in More, 9/12, pgs.126-7.) She has some impressive statistics to support her view. More

As the saying goes, “Good things come to those who wait.” I’m not partial to waiting, to be honest. I hate standing in lines or at a stop light when I’m in the car. But this week, I was rewarded by waiting — though I admit, the waiting wasn’t by intention. Several year