One recent Saturday morning when I was out of town our lawn service came by. My husband let Pepper out while one of the men trimmed things up with a weed eater. She went berserk, my husband reported, attacking the…
I’m in Delaware, where it’s in the 50s and raining. That being said, it’s a very pleasant 72 in my room at the Hampton Inn, newly remodeled. I’m here for a little while so I bought some lilies and a cheap…
LA, you’ve got nothing on Nashville! Well, there’s the year-round sunshine. Hollywood. The Pacific Ocean. And the books you’ve inspired. I’m forced to concede you might have a few things. Today, Matt Osborne and I feature three books set…
It was my gift, not hers, wrapped in a pretty blue box and ribbon with lots of white tissue paper. Pepper found it on the dining room table and dismantled it while I was upstairs. I found most of the…
It is no small thing to write a book that is the culmination of your life’s work. That’s what my neighbor Andy Spickard has done, and I’m incredibly happy to share it with you today – The Craving Brain: Science,…
Mothers do have ideas about how things should be. In her new memoir Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, Ordinary Grace) shares some of the things her mother taught her: “I was not to…
If you’ve got three minutes – literally, three – and need a tiny refreshing break from the Mayhem, check out a newly released interview with Margaret Atwood, part of Nashville Public Television’s revitalized Word on Words series. Margaret Atwood did some…
Pepper and I made an emergency visit to the vet the other day after she sniffed out part of a dark chocolate bar hiding in my husband’s briefcase and made short work of it. The vet initially gave her a…
It’s not often that I read three books focusing on race in the span of a couple of months, and this was time well spent. I’ll describe all three, but if you just want the take-home (because April is a…