... On Derision & the Book . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Gail sees a movie: A Serious Man .

... now we can make whiskey! (Does anyone else remember that line from the Firesign Theater?) Anyway, here is R.T.'s review of The Whisk...

... Festival of Authors opens with a meeting of the prose . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... and open to the public: Hemingway festival becomes a symposium . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

... Just say no the blasphemy laws . I think you have to believe in the first place in order to really blaspheme. Otherwise, it's irreve...

... that is Jonathan Chait on Ayn Rand. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) It is a confusion shared by many: Rand did not think income and wealth repre...

... Dr. No: Joseph Wiseman (1918-2009) . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

... An Artist in Treason By ANDRO LINKLATER . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Dave also notes that Andro was the fellow who took that photo of me in ...

... Student Senate denounces Geert Wilders. God knows, they could sure use an education, especially in regard to the value of free speech. W...

... Euphony and the Art of Writing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Somerset Maugham: Born in Paris, Maugham absorbed the lessons of euphony from the...

Prose - words in their best order; poetry - the best words in their best order. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge , born on this date in 1772

... The world according to Robert Harris.

... Where Home Is, The Heart Isn't. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) This is definitely a good idea: " Any revitalization of rural America ...

... the IBPC's Winning Poems for October 2009. ... The Judge's Page . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

... Glittering Year, Golden Anniversary . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) 1959. The year I graduated from high school.

... `Diversion Comes in Many Forms' . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Nicole Brossard: Negotiating the flash, the burn . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends (down, flat–even up).

... Very special delivery .

... Chesterton's Return. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) In the meantime, there's also this: Pope: Anglicans, Liturgy, Welcome! UPDATED . Dav...

... Academia Goes Silent on Free Speech. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Shakespearean Backtalk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... It will blossom when it blossoms .

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge. - Arthur Rimbaud , born on this date in 1854

Nicholson Baker talks poetry (among other things)...

... Lionel Shriver: I sold my family for a novel . I always loved it when Lionel reviewed for me. She never, ever pulled her punches. And th...

... Howard Roark in New Delhi . As modern India continues to undergo seismic economic and cultural shifts, not to mention the current gl...

... `The Ragweed of Covetousness' . As a cradle Catholic, I must say the Church could use a little more fulsome rhetoric from the pulpit...

... Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I don't buy the Darwinian fairy tale proposed herein, but I do agr...

... featuring Jeannette Walls, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Hoffman and more: Local Area Events.

... Promises, promises. I happened to read some of Manny Farber's essays recently, and I didn't think they stood up at all. In fact,...

... WELCOME TO THE POE CONFERENCE: BAD-ASS PAINTINGS AND A RAVEN .

... Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future, as some physicists say? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) But, if " this...

... this morning I received a email from Bruce Bawer regarding this post of mine, in which I pointed out that, contrary to what I had said ...

... Does "Superfreakonomics" Need A Do-Over? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) ... on the other: Global Warming in SuperFreakonomics : The An...

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us. - Sir Thomas Brown e, born on this date in 1605

... Burn Me! (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) For some reason, this brings to mind Rabelais's account of how Pantagruel interprets the story of t...

... bloody Germans . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) With increasing proficiency comes this danger, of loosing words without substance. The differenc...

... we're taking notice of Bruce Bawer's book. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who also sent along this: Academia Goes Silent on Free...

... at Petrona . Just scroll and enjoy. If I were an author of a series, I'd find it hard to continue once actors were firmly establishe...

... Cravat Heroes, No 2 - Charles Collingwood .

... I failed to notice the piece on Hilary Mantel. ... Mantel and Simpsons . ... Richard Wilson .

... Jeanette Winterson: In Praise of The Crack-Up. ... The demons that drove John Cheever. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... that I couldn't: I can't read this ... But now I have read James Wood's review of A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book ....

... Exploring a time when poetry and science mingled . ... yours truly on A.S. Byatt's latest: Oblivious to looming cataclysm . ... Kazu...

Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality. - Henri Bergson , born on this date in 1859

An interesting piece from the New York Times ...

... The Book That Contains All Books . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... of T LS Letters : Ben Jonson's foot voyage, Black separatism, 'Hind Swaraj', and more .

... for polycentric governance: The Non-Tragedy of the Commons .

... not a buyer: A Frieze night in the park. How much is that?

... Brideshead Revealed .

... More Friday funstuff (or lyricism & ppppffffrrrrrttttts) . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... D.G. Myers on Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, and Whittaker Chambers: The Never-Ending Journey . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Along with a nosta...

... Julian Barnes on John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy: Running Away .(Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Broken link is now fixed.

... Terry Teachout on The Mystery of Music .

... Renée Alberts: an Interview .

"That part of the gospel where Christ speaks of man's life as a seed cast into a furrow […] seemed to illuminate the whole of life ...

... It's Wodehouse Day...

... Style and Alchemy and Awestrunk . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) The Elements of Style is a perfectly useful introduction to elementary gramma...

... with writers like these: 5 Authors More Badass Than The Badass Character They Created. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

... Governor General's Literary Awards 2009 . (Hat tip, Hedgie.) Poetry nominee Sina Queyras blogs at Lemon Hound .

... which doesn't mean I don't still like books: Does the Brain Like E-Books? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Congenial Disorder: Why should we look for comfort in poetry? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Donoghue quotes Matthew Arnold: "Without poetr...

... Paging Annabel Lyon . . . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Madame del Giocondo was unavailable for comment.

... may not be so long: Imagining a future without journalists . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) In his early morning slot, David Gilbertson, the chi...

... EXCLUSIVE: Huffington Post Passes WashingtonPost.com in Unique Visitors, in September . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Don't know if this is ...

... Villages of the Damned . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I haven't read all of these I agree regarding those that I have. "Young Goodman...

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. - Oscar Wilde , born on this date in 1854

More on Wolf Hall and the Booker Prize...

... Brave Thinkers . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... Is the "Mysterious Star" Fading? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I do think it is unwise to suggest that Poe's influence is waning....

...I just happened upon: Issa's Untidy Hut .

Dag Wiren was born on this date in 1905.

... makes a comeback: Facial Profiling . In the last decade, breakthroughs in 3-D modeling and animation software have opened up the field...

... A Little Night Fiction .

Last week, I read in two sittings Torgny Lindgren's In Praise of Truth . What follows are some of the things I noted while reading. A re...

... And now for something completely brilliant . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. - Italo Calvino , born on this date in 1923

... sort of: FTC Reassures Bloggers - Big Brother Isn't Watching . Luckily for me, I have a pretty good idea of the difference between r...

... National Book Awards - 2009 . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... On crime & thrillers: A Soviet serial killer and a secret speech provide suspense in Tom Rob Smith’s two crime thrillers .

... at it again: Satan Rules - and in Norway, of all places.

... Indie heartthrob: Paul Siegell .

... Ron Slate on Cockroach, a novel by Rawi Hage .

... to power: Now Playing at Reason.tv: Cuban Punk Rocker Gorki Aguila on Music, Life, and Getting Led Zeppelin Records in Cuba.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. - William Penn , born on this date in 1644

... Translation . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... On British and American Poetry .

... Murder Most Mystifying . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

... God vs. Science Isn't the Issue . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... "A New Era of Friendship and Prosperity" .

... Life is more than a series of defeats .

The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. - Albert Jay Nock , born on this date...

... on a bgeat book (Morison's The Admiral of the Ocean Sea) : HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY .

... Faith and Belief . I happen to be underwhelmed by both Jack Miles and Karen Armstrong. It is interesting that, the headline notwithstand...

... of The Quarterly Conversation .

... Local Area Events .

... VPR: Tenth Anniversary Issue .