The Eastside View

Spoon Fed (Riverhead Books, 2010), by Kim Severson: enjoyable. A breezy memoir in nine chapters, each centered on one or another well-know...

S LAVIC LANGUAGES LACK the definite article , as anyone with a Czech in the family can attest. So Libby Appel's version of Anton Chekhov...

" W HAT IS IT FOR ?", Ann asked, as we sat in her small comfortable small living room after the concert. We'd been reflecting ...

T HE QUOTE IS FROM Jared Loughner, the apparently paranoid young man who seems to have been responsible for the shootings in Tucson a week ...

A FRIEND WRITES : Working on a small piece about creativity and was just wondering if you could give me a word, phrase or sentence on what...

Y ESTERDAY I READ A BOOK confirming and explaining the connection I've long felt exists between Netherlands and the United States — a c...

O R: COUNTRY MOUSE , city mouse. For a long time it's seemed to me possible, maybe even simple — too simple, you'll object — to di...

A FTER AN INTERLUDE of a couple of days in Milan, too busy to write, I resume, I hope. If you look at a map of Italy you see at what's ...

Milan, November 1— W E SEEM USUALLY to have incredibly good luck finding places to stay and to eat. In Lanslebourg, wondering what to do fo...

Milan, November 1— W E WERE ESSENTIALLY without Internet connection for the three days after leaving Lanslebourg: hence I have catching up ...

Lanslebourg, Savoie, October 27, 2010— I BROUGHT L INDSEY HERE to show her the valley I'd walked a couple of years ago, when Henry and...

Lanslebourg, Savoie, October 26— T HE LAST TIME I was here I was unimpressed with the area. Not this town, with its comfortable old-fashione...

W E'VE BEEN ON THE ROAD almost a week, but the first couple of days don't really count, of course; you're in the air, your mind...

W HAT AN INTERESTING , classically absorbing evening of dance the other night in Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Berkeley. Mark Morris presented t...

C OMMENTS POSTED RECENTLY to my post of a few days ago, over at Eating Every Day, about a dinner at Oliveto in Oakland, bring to mind a ma...

Ashland, Oregon— W E FINISHED THIS SEASON of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last night with a satisfying production of Twelfth Night . It ...