TOM SWIFT LIVES by Robert Lopresti I suppose this gets filed under Criticizing My Betters. I am reading a novel by a best-selling mystery writer. It is my first encounter with her and, I suspect, my last. I have found it a hard slog and I just realized what part of the problem is. I’m […]

THE ART OF BASEBALL by Melodie Johnson Howe I spent Sunday attempting to do The New York Times crossword puzzle and watching baseball. I love the game. It’s a mixture of choreography, chess, star turns, and contact sport. It also has something that most other sports do not: a mixture of young players and aging […]

ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE by James Lincoln Warren I recently advised an aspiring young writer that one of the things he should try to be is flexible. What I meant was he shouldn’t be narrowly defined by his own tastes, that he try not to write just what he wanted, but to try writing something that […]

An ADD SUNDAY by Leigh Lundin “Craig’s decision to stay in the Senate means exposing himself to a full Ethics Committee investigation into his conduct.” This quotation from the Idaho Statesman came to my attention through writer Michael Murphy. Writers enjoy catching unintended witticisms and of course Jay Leno has made a regular segment out […]

CONJUNCTION JUNCTION by Angela Zeman Sometimes I wonder why we readers and writers have such a love affair going with the written word. I’m proceeding on the premise that we get just one life. (Reincarnation would be great, but suppose it’s not true?) Time passes. No matter what we do with it, time does not […]

SERENDIPITY Part 2 by Steven Steinbock I knew it was coming, so I can’t call it serendipity. But in today’s mail I received a used copy of Serendipity and the Three Princes: From the Peregrinaggio, edited by Theodore G. Remer. This purchase was motivated a week and a half ago, when I couldn’t find my […]

SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL by Deborah Elliott-Upton An online writer’s group I belong to is in the midst of a discussion about blogs. The main question is whether they are or are not important to a writer and if readers care enough to return to read day after day, week after week. So […]