Three quick UPDATES!
UPDATE! An anonymous commenter suggested some weeks ago that I read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Which I finally did, just this morning. I'm not very far into it, but I already don't like any of the characters. I was worried that the whole book would be as fussy and overwritten as the first paragraph, but it settled down reasonably quickly. In between then and now, I read Christopher Moore's Sacre Blue, which was enjoyable but not in the top rank of Moore's oeuvre, and Top of the Rock, Warren Littlefield's brief and somewhat self-serving (but not necessarily unjustifiably so) narrative history of NBC's "Must See TV" lineup of the 1990s and early aughts, plus a couple chapters of Daniel Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.
UPDATE! I can't figure out what the Badger Herald is up to regarding its crossword puzzles. Last week, instead of printing no puzzles on Monday and two on Thursday, they printed one each both days. But when I solved the Thursday puzzle, it seemed way too easy for a New York Times Thursday puzzle, and when I checked crosswordfiend.com later, I found that it was, in fact, not a Thursday puzzle at all, but rather a Tuesday puzzle. Similarly, this past Monday's puzzle seemed a bit too hard for a Monday, and crosswordfiend.com confirmed it was actually a Wednesday puzzle. Does that mean next Monday's print edition will have a Friday puzzle? Part of me hopes so -- I generally prefer harder puzzles to easier ones -- but on the other hand, running a Friday puzzle on a Monday strikes me as to great a violation of the natural order.
UPDATE! I mentioned last week that I'd sampled the first episodes of two new Fox sitcoms, but failed to mention I also tried a new Fox drama: Sleepy Hollow. I wasn't blown away by the pilot, but it was good enough to get me to watch the second episode. But I'm still not blown away. There's nothing I particularly dislike about it, and I admire the producers for casting a black actress as the female lead, but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it. And while it's too early to say for sure, it's hard to envision at this point how they plan to keep it from devolving pretty quickly into just a Harbinger of the Apocalypse of the Week sort of show. But with four people credited as the creators, maybe one of them has some sort of long-range plan in mind.
UPDATE! I can't figure out what the Badger Herald is up to regarding its crossword puzzles. Last week, instead of printing no puzzles on Monday and two on Thursday, they printed one each both days. But when I solved the Thursday puzzle, it seemed way too easy for a New York Times Thursday puzzle, and when I checked crosswordfiend.com later, I found that it was, in fact, not a Thursday puzzle at all, but rather a Tuesday puzzle. Similarly, this past Monday's puzzle seemed a bit too hard for a Monday, and crosswordfiend.com confirmed it was actually a Wednesday puzzle. Does that mean next Monday's print edition will have a Friday puzzle? Part of me hopes so -- I generally prefer harder puzzles to easier ones -- but on the other hand, running a Friday puzzle on a Monday strikes me as to great a violation of the natural order.
UPDATE! I mentioned last week that I'd sampled the first episodes of two new Fox sitcoms, but failed to mention I also tried a new Fox drama: Sleepy Hollow. I wasn't blown away by the pilot, but it was good enough to get me to watch the second episode. But I'm still not blown away. There's nothing I particularly dislike about it, and I admire the producers for casting a black actress as the female lead, but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it. And while it's too early to say for sure, it's hard to envision at this point how they plan to keep it from devolving pretty quickly into just a Harbinger of the Apocalypse of the Week sort of show. But with four people credited as the creators, maybe one of them has some sort of long-range plan in mind.