About a half-dozen men, over the course of the last couple years, have attempted to strike up a conversation on public transit with me by asking, "You know there's a Kindle app for your phone now, right?" They see me reading my Kindle and occasionally taking out my phone when the text chime goes off, so they know I have an iPhone, too. They are ( Read more... )

We read comic books in my Contemporary Literature class, which is the sort of thing that makes English one of the most mockable fields of study. (One year, our departmental t-shirts read: "English: It's Not Just a Muffin, it's a Major." This was either shortly before or after Philosophy used the slogan "We're in it for the money.") These were ( Read more... )

I'm getting through Katharine Hepburn's autobiography gradually. Since it doesn't follow any strict timeline or narrative, it's easy to put it down, read an entire, different book, then return to Katharine. One page Hepburn will be at Bryn Mawr, on the next in Hollywood, then you hit page 32 and she's fourteen years old and cutting her eldest ( Read more... )

My book club read The Secret Life of Bees last month. For an all-female club we indulge in minimal chick lit, but after a few months of meaty texts, Katie suggested this lighter fare. It's not quite light in that there's copious racism and a heaping helping of child abuse, but it all turns out fine in the end, putting it on the Comedy side of the ( Read more... )