How to Seem Smart
Read a book. This is the sort of thing smart people do even when no one is looking.
Reading
Not All Women
What will we be, after all, if men don’t chase us and whistle at us and tell us we’re pretty? What will we be if they don’t need us to cook and clean and raise their children? What will we be if they don’t call us or ask us to dance?
The Joy of Rediscovering Shirley Jackson
In preparing for a class on gothic elements in fiction, I pulled an old book from my shelves. I’d gone searching for Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but I found myself drawn to We Have Always Lived in the Castle instead. Have you read this book? I don’t think I’ve read it in more than …
A Rabid Dog Will Bite
The media is atwitter with news about a forthcoming book that contains damning information about the president and the president’s inner circle. Much of that information comes from a man who was, until very recently, part of that inner circle. Steve Bannon spilled his rotten guts to Michael Wolff, the author of the soon-to-be-released tell-all …
We Read, Joyce Carol Oates. We Read.
Give anyone enough time and they will break your heart. I am a southerner. I live in Denver now, but I spent the first 21 years of my life in Mississippi. I first read Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over …
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Does anyone have an IQ test at the ready? I ask, because apparently challenging someone to an IQ duel is now a thing that is happening in the highest levels of our government. Lord, help us. I have no desire to watch elected officials on either side of the aisle brag about their intelligence. No …
Banned Books I Have Loved
It’s Banned Books Week and organizations from the American Booksellers Association to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (who knew?) are commemorating our right to read without censorship. When we think of banned books, we often think of books forbidden by the government ala the plot of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but that isn’t really how …
How to Make a Nightmare
Take one late summer cold virus. Stir in a generous helping of all the following symptoms: sneezing, runny nose, coughing, congestion, headache, backache, fever, exhaustion. Add copious amounts of unpronounceable over-the-counter medications: pseudoephedrine, dextromethorphan, diphenhydramine, guaifenesin, phenylephrine bitartrate, aspirin. For added fun, examine labels and research drug interactions while peering through dirty reading glasses. You are …
Mama Knows Best? Not Always
This weekend my home state held its annual Mississippi Book Festival. I didn’t go. It’s a long way from Denver to Jackson, but my mother gave me a full report. She told me Ellen Gilchrist was super funny and charming at the morning session. No surprise. She told me about young adult author Angie Thomas …
For Freedom, Just Add Water
My husband is a whiz at fast-forwarding through television commercials. I am not so quick to the button. When he travels, as he’s doing now, I see a lot of random advertisements while I’m watching Jeopardy! or the news. There is an ad running now that is both relentlessly terrifying and ridiculous. It’s an ad …