Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.

Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast.

The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living?

Updike was the first to take the penile sensorium under the wing of elaborate metaphorical prose.

E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

You can register a political objection in a number of ways.