I’ve been debilitated for the past week by an attack of gout, a condition wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I’ve had it in my feet before; you take some pills and goes away. But this time its in my knee and it’s not responding very well to the medication. It’s getting better, but frustratingly […]

I’m watching the last episode of “Big Little Lies” for the third time. It’s worth watching more than once because of the lush visuals — the gorgeous scenery of the California coast, the incredibly beautiful women, the sweet faces of the children — and the best acting I have ever seen on television. Reese Witherspoon […]

Dashiell Hammett, Alexander Dumas, Homer (the blind Greek guy, not Homer Simpson), Georges Simenon, Sue Grafton, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol — these are authors whose books I automatically buy when I see them at tag sales and flea markets. If you asked me who is my favorite author, I would have to think, but I […]

I’ve been to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst a couple of times, and I admit I am intrigued by the reclusive Belle of Amherst, though I have never been able to make heads or tails of her enigmatic poetry. I know, I know, “A poem should not mean, but be.” What I mean is, […]

I got a deal on a copy of The Sixties by Edmund Wilson at the Whately Antiquarian Book Center, marked down from $35 to a buck. Who knew the journals of this crusty old gentleman could be such fun? There are quite a few references to my grandmother, his cousin, and her brother Sandy, who […]

I’m reading my 20th Spencer novel  by Robert B. Parker, and while I have found that some of them are positively preposterous, and all are very formulaic, I still enjoy reading about Spencer beating up thugs, making love to Susan Silverman, and quoting poetry. In Painted Ladies, the wife of a murder victim alludes to a […]

I just finished my 17th Spenser mystery by Robert B. Parker — ‘Silent Night.’ Coincidentally, it’s the last one he wrote, or rather co-wrote. He was working on it when he died and Helen Brann, his literary agent for 32 years, finished it, with the blessing of Parker’s wife Joan. Obviously it’s a formula I’m […]