"I always start with physicality when I’m writing as a woman. So I always have a vagina and think about having periods."

Said Will Self , who has a new novel, "Umbrella," the title of which is based on the Joyce quote "A brother is as easily for...

If Sonia Sotomayor's autobiography has nothing at all about law or even politics...

... why would anyone read it? The book, which covers her life prior to becoming a judge, barely says a word about the Constitution and even...

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."

Think hard. It doesn't really matter — does it? — that this is today's sentence from "The Great Gatsby," another dutiful p...

"What sort of people were these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all..."

"... everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in his own home?" A Kafka quot...

"There are notes and notes, of course: notes to oneself and notes to others; notes taken, made, jotted, and passed."

"Mash, doctor's, suicide, and condolence notes. Field, class, and case notes; notes for general circulation; foot and head notes, n...

Sotomayor, the college years.

One slide in a long, narrated slideshow at NPR.com . I picked that one out because it's so different from the others and from every othe...

"Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around annoying people?"

Says Pretty Alice to the Harlequin in Harlan Ellison's "Repent Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman," which I read on the urgi...

Goodbye to Richard Ben Cramer.

The author of the great book "What It Takes," died yesterday at the age of 62 . Here 's Throwing Things: If you've never r...

In discussing what makes a job the "least stressful"...

... consider that, in this context, the opposite of stress is control . Is that true? For some, I would think, too much control would lead t...

C-Span is sorry it wrote "Just Plain Dick" and "I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up" at the top of your screen.

"Now on C-SPAN2: Just Plain Dick" appeared on screen at 1:30 a.m. ET on January 1 as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) was speaking in the Se...

How to read a book a day for a year.

Choose short/easy/audio books. Actually, I read a book a day and have for years — but it's an audiobook, and most of this reading is don...

A couple of books.

I was just asking for some ideas for a conversation about end-of-the-year things, and now I've had the conversation, which I'll be ...

"It’s almost always a mistake to read only a first-rate writer’s masterpieces."

"A great deal of Fussell’s best, most perceptive and, frankly, most hilarious work arrived in books like 'Class: A Guide Through th...

"15 Things Overachievers Do."

Penelope Trunk's list is — in typical Trunk style — highly provocative, full of surprising details and counterintuitiveness. 2. They us...

"British paper sues Lance Armstrong for $1.5m over lost libel action."

"Sunday Times paid now-disgraced cyclist $485,000 in 2006 over claims that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs." That reminds...

How does Amazon know that author you're reviewing is a member of your family?

It's easy to see why Amazon would want to edit out biased reviews, but how can it know who is biased ? And then there's that lady wh...

American Girl dolls in stop-motion video.

A YouTube phenomenon. Those American Girl dolls are expensive , but if a kid is interested in stop-motion animation, she (or he) doesn't...

"How to Be OK Pursuing Happiness as a Warm Friend To a Puppy Not of One's Own but By Borrowing Your Neighbor's Best Friend and Taking Him to Dog Parks Where He Can Make Lots of Friends of His Own."

The title of the book Meade says he would write if he "wanted to write a book motivated purely out of my love for humanity." It...

"I've been so many places in my life and time..."

We're listening to "A Song for You" here at Meadhouse tonight. The original, by Leon Russell , and this version by The Carpent...

"3 Books To Read Before The End Of The World."

On the theory, presumably, that it's still amusing to talk about the Mayan apocalypse, NPR picks out some reading material, beginning wi...