“Peanuts” may not have the cool factor of other things in our culture, but it has transcended the test of time; it has become an almost Talmudic totem, a talisman, one that we take with us, celebrate with, and perhaps cling to all the more tightly in times of trouble.
For most of us, the beginner stage is something to be got through as quickly as possible, like a socially awkward skin condition. But even if we’re only passing through, we should pay particular attention to this moment. For once it goes, it’s hard to get back.
Even though I gave away or sold perhaps 150 boxes of books in 2020, the stunned amazement of anyone who wanders into my basement or attic apparently remains, to quote Sherlock Holmes, the one fixed point in a changing age. Admittedly, only a small number of people crossed my threshold during this time of coronavirus restrictions, but most never even bothered to ask, “Have you read all these books?” They just stood dumbfounded, though a few were overheard to murmur, “I feel sorry for his poor wife” or, more rarely, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” My living room, to my delight if no one else’s, can now pass as the ramshackle library of an impoverished London club circa 1895. More and more often, I settle into a shabby, cat-clawed wing chair with the day’s newspapers and periodically snort “Harrumph!” or grumble that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
After a three-hour bullet train ride, I stepped into the shivering cold of snow country in northern Japan. Still jet-lagged from the 11-hour plane ride from Los Angeles to Tokyo, I wasn’t prepared for this bone-chilling weather. But I also knew I was shivering from the sheer joy and anticipation of eating good soba. “Soba” means buckwheat and is also the name of the long, beige Japanese noodle. I am known to travel the distance to eat soba, but this trip meant more than that.
You wouldn’t expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, Eley Williams’s hilarious new book, “The Liar’s Dictionary,” is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama.
The heroes of the traditional Western were always sure about what made them the way they were; what made a man a man. For Ada and the other "outlaws" of this spirited novel, the frontiers of gender and sexuality beckon to be explored.
Meeting yourself in media is no guarantee that the mirror will be kind or wanted. Instead, it’s often a jagged glass you catch yourself in before it catches you. And even when you know it’s coming, the blood’s still warm and sharp. What of me, of us, was I to witness in “The Prophets,” the debut novel of Robert Jones Jr., set on an antebellum plantation in Mississippi?
When did I know that I’d have to carry it around
in order to have it when I need it, say in a pocket,