The New “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Cover Is a Creepy Mistake
Penguin Books released a new cover of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Roald Dahl’s classic. The cover features a young girl wrapped in a pale pink feather...
View ArticleThe Books We Love and What They Say About Us
A new status has been popping up on Facebook lately, and it’s not, surprisingly enough, more #IceBucketChallenge posts. Instead, users are sharing their “top 10 books.” The status usually prompts...
View ArticleCelebrating—and Protecting—the Freedom to Read
Americans have a reflexive resistance to the idea of censoring literature and the banning of books. This is the land of free speech, after all. Certainly we’ve wrestled with it in the past, but we’re...
View ArticleLena Dunham Really IS the Voice of Her Generation
Reading Not That Kind of Girl reminded me of slumber parties growing up. After eating way too much ice cream and watching a sappy chick flick, us girls would often sit around, talking late into the...
View ArticlePrudence: Long Live the Queen
From The Seven Deadly Virtues, Andrew Ferguson’s take on the lack of prudence in New Science, which he defines as “the application of the methodologies of the physical sciences to realms of human...
View ArticleGene Simmons’ Feminist Advice to Women
Though I was raised on rock and roll, I was never a fan of the glam rockers of KISS. But in recent years I have come to admire the band’s driving force, tongue-wagging bass player Gene Simmons, now an...
View ArticleJustice: The One Virtue Nobody Really Wants
From The Seven Deadly Virtues, Hollywood writer and producer Rob Long tackles justice, a complicated concept “with lots of moving parts and a terrifying margin of error.” “Justice,” he says, “is karma...
View ArticleSex and the Single Girl: A Review of ‘How to Build a Girl’
So here’s the problem: I really liked Caitlin Moran’s newest book, How to Build a Girl. Her protagonist, Johanna Morrigan, is funny, interesting, smart, and complicated. Her insecurities and...
View ArticleInside ‘The Room’
If you haven’t seen the 2003 cult classic movie The Room, stop reading and come back after viewing it here. There is a reason it has attained the status of “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”—and that...
View ArticlePerseverance: All the Way to the End
From The Seven Deadly Virtues, author and political satirist Christopher Buckley discusses perseverance, “the one that most lends itself to motto, sloganeering, and escutcheon.” A fitting virtue for...
View ArticleThe Seven Deadly Virtues and the ‘New York Times’
From The Seven Deadly Virtues, political satirist and author P.J. O’Rourke assesses the vices found on the pages of The New York Times Sunday Styles section. — [Ed.] Before we consider what virtue has...
View ArticleAmy Poehler and How Cell Phones Want to Kill Us
The best comedians are those who notice reality as it is, and allow us to also see the absurdities that come with it. One of my favorite observers is Amy Poehler, whose deadpan delivery and comedic...
View ArticleGratitude: The Parent of All Other Virtues
From The Seven Deadly Virtues, Jonathan Last discusses gratitude, the virtue “that allows us to appreciate what is good, to discern what should be defended and cultivated.” — [Ed.] Picking a favorite...
View ArticleThe (Blessed) End of Middle Earth on the Big Screen
After the final Hobbit film is released next week, Middle-earth may never again grace the big screen. Last week, director Peter Jackson announced that the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has denied future...
View ArticleJennifer Lopez on Life, Love, and Bad Reasons to Get Married
Jennifer Lopez has been one of the most recognizable, bankable names in pop-culture for fifteen years. She has amassed millions of dollars and millions of fans during that time. She has dated and...
View ArticleBig Brother on the Shelf
He sees you when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows if you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness’ sake. There’s always been a not-so-subtle undercurrent of parental scrutiny to...
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Books to Read in 2015
I love to read. More than almost any other decision, the one I made in my early 20’s to become a serious reader and consumer of information (and great works of literature) has proven to be the...
View ArticleDraco Malfoy’s Bad Boy Appeal
As any novelist will tell you, fictional characters, once released into the world, take on a life of their own in the minds and hearts of readers. They no longer belong solely to the writer. Once a...
View ArticleMarvel’s Massive New Book
At $200 it looks expensive, but make no mistake about it: 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden age to the Silver Screen is worth every penny. This is a massive book, in fact dangerous to life for...
View ArticleZuckerberg’s Year of Reading Copiously
One of my New Year’s resolutions, besides resolving to actually commit to New Year’s resolutions, is to shift more of my media diet toward reading books. Imagine my surprise, then, when social media...
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