John McWhorter has mentioned in interviews and in lectures that his next book will be about some aspect of black culture in America. One time he mentioned a title -- The New Double Consciousness. Just …

I guess I should say "Oh no!"; Rob Lowe is leaving one of my favorite TV shows, The West Wing (good fan site). He plays Sam Seaborn, evidently up till March 2003. To tell the …

Tonight, at dinner with Adam, I found myself referring to "the cats I work for". I find myself reading a month or two of Jon Carroll archives every day, and I find at least a …

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Reading Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth, which I like.

Yesterday, my most interesting inquiry from a bookstore customer: "Where do you keep the pseudohistory?" "Do you mean the history that you and I think is bogus, or the history that even the author knows …

The Orinda Shakespeare Festival tends to put on four plays each summer: three Shakespeare (this year, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream), and one other classic or related-to-the-Bard (this year, Chekhov's The …

Zack saw it too! Leonard and I saw that vehicle on Saturday as we walked on Fulton between Bancroft and Durant. He felt an affinity for it, and now I know why. I think the …

I realize that my current job as a lowly clerk at Cody's makes me some bizarre triangulation between Anirvan, who founded Bookfinder, and Seth, who frequents bookstores and whose dad is in the brick-and-mortar bookstore …

Links for today: the history of Russia, an internship at Tor, and a best-of-craigslist ad.