The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson)

When I was a kid, every day was packed with ten times the activities I’d dream of doing now. Most of it was spontaneous, like finding out what kind of dog was barking on the next block. All of it was important, like finding out what the school looked like upside down. I remember knowing [...]

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Noises Off (Michael Frayn)

There’s something deliciously sneaky about reading a script. You see the actors fussing about on the stage when you watch a play, but you have access to the actors’ code book — the stage directions — when you read a play. It’s almost like you’re privvy to their secrets. It opens up a whole new [...]

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney)

QUICK TAKE: It’s not easy being a middle school kid. Just ask Gregory Heffley, the narrator in Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons. The boy who figures he’s “somewhere around 52nd and 53rd most popular” in school relates an entire year of fun and mishaps in his journal. Using simple [...]

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The Areas of My Expertise (John Hodgman)

Ever wonder how much you should tip a hotel’s starling boy? Or its melancholier? Or its feral turn-down service? Do you even know what these are? Neither did I … until I came upon John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise [LibraryThing / WorldCat], an almanac of miscellaneous facts with a twist: It’s a pack [...]

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Marley & Me (John Grogan)

Marley was not the world’s worst dog, although it may have seemed so to John Grogan from time to time. He was expelled from obedience school and ate speaker covers so thoroughly they vanished. (I won’t even begin to describe Grogan’s idea for a jewelry-cleaning business.) But Marley was, in fact, a wonderful dog. Their [...]

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Unshelved (Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum)

I’ll admit it. I’m not above comics. In fact, I read every Foxtrot collection that comes out. Most of the Dilberts, too. And why not? There’s no rule saying that everything you read has to be 200+ pages of seriousness with chapters, end notes, and an index. Comic strips can be every bit as funny [...]

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