BOOKS: WE LIVED ON THE HORIZON,by Erika Swyler
WE LIVED ON THE HORIZON, by Erika Swyler, 336 pages, hardcover, Atria Books, January 14, 2025 [*CAVEAT - This is my first foray into Buttondown publishing...
BOOKS: THE DREAM HOTEL, by Laila Lalami
Can we firewall our dreams before it's too late?
BOOKS: Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield
A stunning debut novel that will leave you wondering how far you'd go to right the wrongs of the past, and the present.
BOOKS: Casualties of Truth, by Lauren Francis-Sharma
A literary fiction thriller which poses puzzles of morality delivered compellingly
Part 4: The Year In (and out of) Reading
The last months of 2024 were not a time period I will want to recall. From September to December (so far, I have two days left as I first draft this) I read...
Part 3: The Year In (and out) of Reading
An introvert's summer reads.
Part 2: The Year In (and out) Of Reading
I only did one 11 day house-sit in February, accompanied friends for two surgeries and follow-ups, one quite awful and scary, took a relative to the doctor,...
The Year In (and out of) Reading, Part 1
A literary journey of quixotic inconstancy meets a life path of hard practicalities
So That (never)Happened
I See What I Wanna See
BOOKS: Honey, by Victor Lodato
Help Me Make This Beautiful Novel as Famous As It Should Be
Vestiges, Echoes, and a Surge of Melancholia
I gave my mom the pink scarf in that picture. She wore it all the time. And always said, “You picked this out for me.” The year Mommy died, Mother’s Day was...
I Want More (to be gotten gone)
Dealing with the accumulated too much muchness of our life
The Road You Didn't Take
Not a day in my life goes by without a Sondheim lyric resonating
I'm Still Here
Circles, Siblings, Surceases, & Sondheims
Third Person
Always the "other", but never significant
This too sullied flesh...
What's left when the temptation for which you've long prayed meets the flesh that is now flabby, enfeebled, and implacably, cantankerously flaccid?
I WISH I COULD QUIT ...
I’m trying to post more but two days ago my laptop auto-updated, which I try NEVER to allow, because it is 11 years old and will NOT really process the...
I'm Fine (But I'm so very not)
Covid, Genetics, Funny Girl, and Charlie's Turn
Readings: TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, by Idra Novey
Idra Novey, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, by Idra Novey, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, expected publication March 2023 Idra Novey. In a just world, just...
Souvenirs - Chapter One
In which, upon being dumped, our hero examines the jigsaw puzzle of his soul; where missing pieces are both a presence and a promise.
Twitter me this . . .
I’ve worked very hard to construct a storyline in which I’m neither embarrassed nor sad that I clean houses and pet sit. All of my siblings and most of my...
Stages: GUYS & DOLLS at the Kennedy Center
"I've never been in love (with Guys & Dolls) before . . . "
Threnody of a Nightingale Unraptured
Things missed, things lost, loves unloved, and songs unsung.
Readings: MOTHER, DAUGHTER, TRAITOR, SPY, by Susan Elia MacNeal
What would you do to save your world?
Readings: Elizabeth McCracken's THE HERO OF THIS BOOK
A book about a mother who has died. Or, rather ... a book about a child after a mother has died. Or, rather ...
Readings: KIKI MAN RAY: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris, by Mark Braude
Behind every great man ... is a woman likely to be erased
Readings: THE KINGDOM OF SAND by Andrew Holleran
The dancer is no longer dancing; so many bodies bruised to pleasure souls which evanesced .... but couldn't he at least get out of the chair?
READINGS: SHY; The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
Rodgers & Hammerstein & Rodgers & Sondheim & Guettel & How I Lived & Loved Musical Theatre
THE MEN, and a few other books of late
Sandra Newman's latest novel ... and a few other recent reads
Since My Last Abortion
15 years and now, nine months of letting go and being gone
That morning after . . .
1When the sun shone through his windshield that fall morning after the election, the first morning the sun had shone that week, the first morning frost had...
What do you do?
“What do you do?” Read. Mostly. “But, what do you do for a living?” For money, you mean? “Yes, for a living.” Well, not to be obtuse, but I don’t consider...
Gay Pan(dem)ic
Lust and fear and lays and lies
Shards, scraps, snippets, scintillas, & shadows
About what has faded, fogged over, and been forgotten
Here I am, going . . . Again
It's Not Polite To Spew When Your Mouth Is Full
Coming soon
This is Here We Are, Going, a newsletter about A curmudgeon forged in the fires of musical theatre, misspent youth, & a marked inability to keep opinions to...