needs more demons?

I found Gray’s enormous, dense history of The Clash mostly fascinating, but the obviousness of Gray’s authorial agendas bugged me. The book is subtitled “The Story and Myth of the Clash,” and Gray spends a lot of effort looking for the points of divergence between the (hi)story and the myth of the band. He provides [...]

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I think the first time my friend Marty and I had a conversation about books, he said something like “I read classic literature [which gave us substantial common ground] and thrillers about serial killers.” [which didn't much increase it] and he expressed a distinct lack of fondness for modern “serious” fiction.
We’ve spent plenty of time [...]

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[editorial note: this review/essay/whatever was originally published as three separate entities over the course of a month.]
surprise benefits of pseudo-vegetarianism
I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink in fits and starts over the past two months — it’s on the library’s short-term loan list, so I request it, read as much as I can before it’s due, [...]

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