Here’s the first setlist — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off the American leg of their 2023 world tour in Tampa last night, which means we got our first glimpse at what the setlist will look like going forward. He will invariably change it up some, usually by adding a song or…

The Duke deserves better than this — It was less than a month ago that I ranted about an article from Slash Film claiming to list the 100 best books of all time. If you read that one, you will recall that the author placed two Dan Brown novels in his top fifteen while not mentioning Ernest…

Help me Ozzy-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope — I have mentioned in several recent stories that I have been in East Texas helping ensure that my octogenarian stepfather does not accidently burn down the house while my mother recovers from a bout of pneumonia. When she first entered the hospital I expected to be here for three or…

Papa was an interesting man — We all know about Ernest Hemingway’s writing (whether you like it or not), and most are familiar with the public persona he so carefully cultivated. …

Algorithms are menaces — We are all well aware of the “fix” Medium perpetrated on us last year that removed the bobbleheads of our favorite writers from the top of our home page. Apparently, it is now easier to find classified documents in Jimmy Carter’s liquor cabinet than it is to find my favorite…

You need to know these — Vinyl records have made a massive comeback of late (much to the delight of Terry Barr), but when they basically disappeared around 1989, we lost something special: the B-sides of 45 rpm singles. It’s hard for kids raised on streaming services to grasp, but there was a time when singles…

Let’s set the record straight — Countless books and films have recounted the events of the Second World War, mostly from the perspective of the victorious Allies, as you would expect. …

A writing prompt — When it comes to writing prompts, I expect to see them early and often from that troublemaker Pierce McIntyre. I was surprised, however, to see one the other day from Mark Holburn, and what a prompt it was. The question seemed simple enough: what three VIP guests would you invite…

Seriously, the books will understand — It’s a simple and somewhat scary fact that there are more books in print today than any of us will ever be able to read in one lifetime, and this doesn’t even begin to take into account the new books that will come out from this point forward. Faced with…