11.23.2014 Community By the Book: Does the page count? It’s said that you can’t judge books by their covers, and you certainly can’t judge them by the four-color, over-the-top advertisements in various Sunday papers. Also, I’ve stopped paying...
10.19.2014 Community By the Book: Some good old words that deserve new life There aren’t many books you can buy in three different weights — the 100-pound version, the 30-pounder or the three-pound bantam weight — but the Oxford English Dictionary would...
09.21.2014 Community By the Book: There are plenty of baseball books, but football? Baseball season is coming to a close and football is now upon us. I’ve done columns about baseball books — the classics, like Malamud’s “The Natural,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s...
08.23.2014 Community By the Book: Good reading is all about the writing I’d forgotten the name of a character in a book and went to Wikipedia. I found what I wanted, but was struck by how easy it is to find...
07.21.2014 Community By the Book: Let the works speak for themselves I recently found two columns about books, the first amusing, the other a little troubling. The troubling one was about “trigger warnings,” notes of caution affixed to college reading...
05.18.2014 Community Columns By the Book: He’s having his way with wacky wordplay I’m without a theme or new idea so it’s mixed-grill time again. I like this sort of column — there’s no worrying whether everything hangs together, like in English...
04.20.2014 Community Columns By the Book: There’s nothing like a great gumshoe It was a dark and stormy night. I dragged myself home from an endless stakeout, popped a Dos Equis and sprawled on the couch. Watched a documentary on “Butch...
03.23.2014 Community Columns By the Book: Nonfiction allows war tales to resonate I recently finished two books about war and the men who fight them. There were many similarities: Each followed a young soldier, each focused on a particularly ugly battle,...