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Entries from December 19th, 2009

On National Character

December 19th, 2009 1 Comment

It’s your favorite snarky vocab curmudgeon’s birthday tomorrow — and as a premature gift from my girlfriend last night I got a copy of Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, by Tristram Hunt.
We saw the book in a store in Montreal a few weeks ago and I thought it looked great (I don’t [...]

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Mark your calendars for a whale of a good time!

December 15th, 2009 No Comments

In 2010 get out to the New Bedford Whaling Museum for their 14th annual Moby Dick marathon! The nonstop reading of the literary leviathan (yes, I went there) begins at noon on January 9.  Details here.
Gosh, you may be thinking, that’s a long way away.  And that is why I  recommend you make whatever arrangements [...]

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From the Valley Came the Scent of Lavender: an Interview with Rhoda Janzen

December 14th, 2009 No Comments

A story about Rhoda Janzen, author of the recent memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress—A Memoir of Going Home: before the Fall 2007 semester at Hope College in Michigan, where Rhoda teaches, I met her for a late-afternoon drink to discuss upcoming classes and some poems of mine I’d sent her.  I arrived late—she [...]

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City of Thieves by David Benioff

December 8th, 2009 No Comments

Leningrad was not a funny place to be during the German’s siege on the city in World War II. When you are starving, hunting rats for dinner, and nibbling small rations of rock-hard “bread,” there is little room for joking around. Somehow though, and without forcing it, author David Benioff mixes humor and brutal reality [...]

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In Light of a Recent Incident

December 7th, 2009 No Comments

Today, business relationships and personal relationships are becoming increasingly indistinguishable; this is for the better.

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On Coming Down

December 1st, 2009 6 Comments

Given the last few months of feverish, 2000-word-a-day thesis-writing, I was expecting some sort of dramatic, devastating crash after handing in last week; something involving, I imagined, sleeping for several days straight and/or losing myself in long bouts of leisure-reading and Rock Band–playing. What has actually happened, though, is completely different — and a lot [...]

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