I’ve talked before about spending years (not, you know, full time or anything) fruitlessly searching for something on the internet (the particular elusive title from an elusively named series of middle-grade fiction, the theme song from a vaguely remembered childhood TV favorite) and then, suddenly, finding it, without fully realizing what (if anything) I was doing differently in my search. Of course, as my boyfriend pointed out, the internet has been changing over those years, filling with new information and… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Blog
Books of 2019, part 2
Come With Me, by Helen Schulman: The description for this pushed a number of buttons for me – nuclear radiation! near-future technology! – but I was expected something that veered more speculative than this ended up. That in itself I didn’t mind, and I generally enjoyed reading this, but…it felt like a draft to me, one that, were I the editor, my comments would have been along the lines of: 1. Too many components that aren’t given their due because… Read more »
Books of 2019, part 1
I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong: Microbes! I started this before January 1st and thoroughly enjoyed reading it on the cold, quiet days following. Sick, by Porochista Khakpour: Super engrossing and beautiful in its structure. I’ve read a few books that investigate or narrate experiences with the long-term effects of Lyme disease (see, I’m even afraid to say chronic Lyme because it’s so controversial!) I’ve read intelligent, considered arguments on both sides and my only certainty is that it would… Read more »
Counting
When I taught English to Thai speakers, one of the more difficult concepts (not necessarily to teach, but rather to introduce the topic in a way that made it through my limited Thai and their limited English as something coherent), was that of countable and uncountable nouns. (Another was whether to use “more + ______” or “______er” for comparative adjectives – mainly because the rule relies on how many syllables the adjective has, and I had to a few semi-acrobatic… Read more »
Pettiness level: Forever stamp plus additional ounces
There’s nothing to make you realize what a charmed and easy life you’ve led like the various mail delivery systems. At least, if you get as aggrieved (and insist on using aggrieved and only aggrieved, and possibly swan around your home wailing, “I’m so aggrieved!“) as I do by the UPS, USPS, and…generally I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with FedEx, or if I have I’ve forgotten it in the way people forget the pain of delivering a… Read more »
Phantom Appointments
Why do I keep getting calls from a doctor’s office in my neighborhood that I’ve never been to? This is actually a fairly easy question to answer: equal parts 1) I’m reasonably certain that this particular doctor was the doctor randomly assigned as my primary care physician (by my insurance), though I changed it pretty immediately; 2) This office clearly REALLY wants patients. Their approach is pretty off-putting and has gone through a few permutations since September. Why September? Maybe… Read more »
Plasticity
When I was twelve I had a water bottle purse. This is a difficult-to-describe contraption, but it was essentially a sling for a regulation size bottle of Evian or Dasani or what not, with a clear plastic strap to hang on your shoulder and three elastic circles to hold the bottle in place. Another twelve-year-old at my summer theatre camp had one, and I was exceedingly jealous. She not only had a lead role in the play but also looked… Read more »
The Fabric of Our Lives
As a child, I was really into the Cotton commercial jingle. That’s not really what I set out to write about, but it is related. I’d imagine most people of a certain age (and I say that because…I really have no idea how long the Cotton jingle persisted as central to its branding; I seem to remember a Zooey Deschanel version, which suggests that it lasted pretty far out of my childhood, but…who knows) would recognize it, or be able… Read more »
Training
Two kids on the train who must have been 12 or 13, both engrossed in their cell phones. Girl: Look at this! My aunt follows my instagram. Boy: How old is your aunt? Girl: Like, in her twenties Boy: Okay, that’s reasonable. (Shakes his plastic Starbucks cup, which is full of ice.) Man, I need more ice drugs! Two women in their fifties. One is consoling the other about a relative–mother, maybe? Woman 1: Well, of course no one wants… Read more »
Booklist: Part 4
Since I had just begun Deborah Eisenberg’s Your Duck is My Duck when I included it in Part 3, I need to start by saying that the title story was one of my favorites and it contains the most genius description of a puppet show I’ve ever read. I read about 1/3 fewer books this year than I have in probably the past 10 years. Is it the internet? Planning on more reading in 2019, but here are the last… Read more »
