Praeterita

I've always wanted to go to St. Louis, but in the ten years I've lived in Chicago, just 300 miles up the road, I never went there until yesterday. Patty had to go to read at Left Bank Books, in the west end/Forest Park area of the city. She and her fellow Elephant Rock Books author, Stacy Bierlein, were doing a joint reading as part of their promotions for their books, "The Temple of Air" (Patty) and "A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends" (Stacy), both of which were published by ERB in the last eight months. Left Bank Books is at the corner of a street in a neighbourhood that looks astonishingly like parts of Vienna, or Prague, or the un-bombed bits of Berlin: Not surprising given the massive German influx into the area in the late 1800s. Home of Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, and all that. I understand that this area has been through several up and down cycles, and is currently enjoying one of its upswings, with cafes, bars, restaurants, boutiques,...

Because everyone likes pictures of cute babies doing cute stuff. There’s a political blogger who I read regularly called Jonathan Bernstein. He frequently writes posts entitled ‘Read Stuff. You Should.’ Most of the time he’s directing people to read stuff on other websites. But the phrase came to mind recently when I thought about a change in my own reading habits at the beginning of this year. Or should I say, a renewal of my reading habits. As 2011 began, I decided to start using Twitter regularly. But I also started to regret the fact that I seemed to be reading less, and in particular reading less fiction. So I decided that I would start reading more stuff, as a counterbalance to the crack-addictive pull of social media, but also because, as Bernstein says, You Should. A couple of things have helped me get started on fulfilling this new resolution. One: my wife Patty was briefly in the hospital over Christmas, so I had hours and hours to wait around, which I filled by readi...