Books Archive

How Shall I Tell the Dog? And Other Final Musings - Don’t feel bad because you’ve never heard of Miles Kington. You’re not a Brit. And you don’t read London newspapers. Brits and London newspaper devotees know all about Kington. He wrote

How to Do It, or The Lively Art of Entertaining - "Even the greatest hostess is forgotten when the last of her guests dies." Don't you wish you'd written that line? Me too. The truth is, I borrowed it from George Painter's great

How to Do Things Right - I met Rust Hills at a party on Nantucket. He was sitting in a lawn chair, nursing a drink. Though he was 81, he had the look of

How to Drink Like a Billionaire: Mastering Wine with Joie de Vivre - The first time I had lunch with Mark Oldman, I didn’t return home until 4 PM. My wife’s reaction: “No way you were having lunch with a man for three

Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City’s 102 Best Restaurants - Dollar skidding, plane fare soaring --- it's not likely I'll be having dinner in Paris any time soon. But that doesn't mean I can't eat in Paris by proxy. Naturally, the

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened - I could say I read “Hyperbole and a Half” because I saw it on Bill Gates’ 2015 “beach reading” list. Or because Advertising Age called her one of the 50

I Am Awake - Norman Mailer said you don’t really know a woman “until you meet her in court.” I might add, “Or until she sends you her book. With Fern Nesson, the question requires another:

I Couldn’t Love You More - Guest Butler Gretl Claggett is a writer, speaker and activist with a mission to help others create more authentic lives. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in many journals

I heard this from a cow: “Vegetables would like a word with you” - The Weekend Butler included David Remnick’s conversation with John Kerry, who’s off to a climate summit in Europe to try to lower the temperature. It included this: KERRY: There’s a lot

I Left It On the Mountain - Kevin Sessums is gay. He’s HIV positive. He was a crystal meth addict. He now lives in San Francisco and edits FourTwoNine, a magazine that celebrates the lesbian, gay,

I Regret Everything - Readers who have dropped in for even a few weeks know that my idea of a love story is The Queen’s Gambit, a novel about a young chess genius who’s

I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 - The death of Nora Ephron created a job vacancy, and now that the mourning period is over, we may expect a slew of books from women who can, as Ephron

I Shock Myself: The Autobiography of Beatrice Wood - TRAVEL TIP: If you're ever in Ojai, California, the Beatrice Wood museum is a pleasant 15 minutes. ---- "From early childhood, I wanted to know what the world was like, willing to

I Want My Hat Back - There’s a big fight raging over a very small --- 120 words, 40 pages --- book for kids. Some people say --- along with the New York Times, which named “I

I’m On My Own and So Are You: Financial Security for Women - Judy Resnick and I seem so different --- I’m New York writer to the bone, she’s West Coast finance on the surface --- that people often ask how we became

I’m Thinking of Ending Things - You may not want to read “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” but you will. With a pounding heart. And flying fingers --- I read all 210 pages in two

Ian McEwan - He's the most popular A-level novelist in England. And this season, there's a very good movie... THE CHILDREN ACT I say I don’t have a type, but Emma Thompson is it. Not

Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach - For all the praise that follows, I was irritated with "On Chesil Beach" when I read it a decade ago. It seemed too cleverly plotted, too neatly resolved --- I

Ian McEwan: Saturday - Ian McEwan is England's best living novelist. Pretty much everyone in England agrees. And although I have read only four of his dozen novels, I'll vote with the mob here

Ian McEwan: The Comfort of Strangers - Atonement was the high point for me. Saturday was a good idea, but the last half is ludicrous --- a Lifetime movie plot. You’d never have heard of On Chesil Beach if England’s