July 7, 2019: I had nice things to say about Jackie Susann* in 2016; this year I have nice things to say about Jackie Onassis, particularly the way she’s depicted in Steven Rowley’s new novel, The Editor, which I review in today’s Portland Press Herald (see here). The novel imagines the real Jackie O’s improbable third act: in 1975, she launched a career as a book editor in Manhattan. Onassis’s literary life didn’t quite overlap with that of the other publishing-sensation Jackie, who died in 1974, but I like to think that each would have admired the other’s pluck and big brown hair.

*Yeah, well, the link’s still broken but they told me they’d fix it, so…

June 9, 2019: I should probably tell you that I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body, but I didn’t hold this (in particular) against Bopper’s Progress, John Manderino’s 2018 novella about a freshly heartbroken layabout’s spiritual quest, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). And of course I don’t hold his spirituality against the late and pretty great Peter Tork, who I always hoped would write not a novella but a memoir. Oh well…

May 13, 2019: As you may have guessed, I don’t really like today. We all knew it was coming, but I wasn’t even close to ready. Want to know why I love Doris Day? Today the great Bright Lights Film Journal has kindly re-run my 2015 tribute to the triply marvelous triple threat, and if you’d like to get started wallowing, here’s the ranking I did of all thirty-nine of her films. By the way: if, when I die, I’m remembered as (as Bright Lights put it some months back) a Doris Day-ologist, that’s fine by me.

May 6, 2019: You know how stupid people believe that an actress’s rendition of sexual arousal is what women’s arousal really looks like? Well, Lisa Taddeo just wrote a knockout of a book, Three Women, about, yes, three women who share with her their true-life experiences of lust and desire. I was lucky enough to review the book (see here) and interview Taddeo (see here) about it for my first Maximum Shelf piece over at Shelf Awareness. Make no mistake: The three women’s stories are not always pretty, which is the (damn) point.

April 23, 2019: Patrick McGuinness’s London-set thriller Throw Me to the Wolves has just been published, and I had the pleasure of reviewing the book for Shelf Awareness and interviewing the author about it (see here). Don’t you just love an egghead (McGuinness is a professor of French and comparative literature at Oxford University) who has time for Peter Falk?

February 12, 2019: Today marks the deathiversary of Betty Garrett—no, not Betty Grable: Betty Garrett, who died eight years ago today and would have turned one hundred on May 23. Garrett is the victim of my latest effort to present an old or dead artist in a new light. My piece, “Who Becomes a Legend Most? And Why Wasn’t It Betty Garrett?,” can be found here at Bright Lights Film Journal, which was nice enough to have me back.

January 27, 2019: Did you like Barry Levinson’s Diner? Want even more midcentury male bonding and bickering over French fries? If you’re willing to exchange Baltimore for Buffalo, consider Philip Sultz’s new short story collection, Lake Effect Days, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), which has kind of been in the news recently (see here too).

January 3, 2019: By this I mean that I don’t give money a lot of thought because it doesn’t really interest me. So I’m just as surprised as you are that I’ve written an essay about money—about money and marriage, actually, and about my money and my marriage, particularly. “My Secret to Marital Bliss Is Refusing to Share My Money” (original title: “My Money, My Self”), my first piece for The Cut, is out today (see here) in “It’s Complicated.” Read it and you’ll feel like a million bucks.

December 23, 2018: I’m using this pizzazzy photo and a great band’s good name to entice you to read my review of a really strong new thrillerish novel about a lobster fisherman who goes missing. My piece on Follow the Sun by Edward J. Delaney is out today in the Portland Press Herald, so put on your nose guard, put on the lifeguard, and see here. Then listen to this.

October 14, 2018: I’m from Boston, so I really should eat chowder. However, I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t. So I compromised: I just reviewed the mystery “Death and a Pot of Chowder” by Cornelia Kidd for the Portland Press Herald. Click here for a nutritious and cruelty-free read.