Reading
Name: Helen Paris Age: 19 Occupation: Student Neighborhood: La Mesa Where interviewed: Barnes & Noble, Grossmont Center What have you read lately? Hush, Hush; it’s a series by Becca Fitzpatrick. The books are about fallen …
Dear Hipster: My friend and I have a longstanding dispute, and I’ve unilaterally decided to bring you into it (you’re welcome). It began years ago, when that book Born to Run came out. I remember …
In the spring of 1970, former baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell came to Patrick Henry High School for a baseball game between the home team and Saint Augustine’s High. As a representative from …
Abe Opincar (Fried Butter) Ruth Reichl, editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, invited me to talk with her about Fried Butter. I went to the Conde Nast building at 4 Times Square. I was ushered …
JD McClatchy "And I think now in the last 10 or 20 years, there’s been a quite remarkable resurgence and readings and performances of high and low quality, from hip-hop or slams and whatnot, to …
Wallace Stevens I remember why I bought The Collected Poems. Stevens’s “Anecdote of a Jar,” from his first collection, Harmonium, published in 1923, was in an anthology I owned. I read and reread “Anecdote of …
In 1966, Craig Smith was friends with Beach Boy Mike Love and Monkee Mike Nesmith. Smith was a successful songwriter and singer marked as a potential pop star. By 1969, he believed he was the …
Czeslaw Milosz on Anna Swir Milosz explained that he set about translating Swir’s poems, “in order to repair injustice, because she was underestimated. I consider her a very important poet. But she was somehow in …
What Greater Curse Than Life Without Verse Theobald opened a correspondence with Ezra Pound that lasted for years. Throughout this time, the poet was an inmate at St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital in Washington, D.C., having …
At first glance, Unit 800’s classroom looks like any ordinary high-school classroom. It has all the usual stuff: bookshelves, white board, map of the world, and around a dozen student desks. Pinned near the ceiling …
Dear Hipster: I think I have a rather unique problem. I am a member of a private, co-ed book club. We are mostly middle-agers, with a few younger and a few older people mixed in. …
What are you reading? “Jedi Search, by Kevin Anderson. It’s a Star Wars book. I read Star Wars and Star Trek books. I’ve got a number of them at home, and I also check them …
Scott Turner has hiked more than a thousand miles carrying Jerry Schad's invaluable Afoot and Afield, so when he offered to update what is the best San Diego hiking franchise, he knew he had big …
Martin Amis In 1993 when Amis left Antonia Phillips for the younger American heiress Isabel Fonseca, London headlines offered: “MARTIN AMIS WRITES OFF HIS MARRIAGE” and “BRAINY, DARK AND STUNNING: THE WOMAN MARTIN AMIS HAS …
What’s something you’ve read recently? “The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. Cutler follows the Dalai Lama around and the Dalai Lama kind of explains to him — not the …
Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote "Why did Capote dislike Gore Vidal so much?" "He didn't dislike Vidal so much. He didn't hate Vidal the way Vidal hated him. They rubbed each …