A friend who knew I was unacquainted with the work of children’s writer Shel Silverstein gave me one of his books recently: “The Giving Tree.”  Amused I breezed through it, even read it aloud as if to  entertain the child inside me.  But when I closed the cover, I

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

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,