If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting!  Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all The story that I am asked to tell most often is how I met my husband, a story that is notable for the coincidence that it...

I purchased Lydia Millets'My Happy Life'some years ago on the strength of her book'Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which I remember being a tremendous read. I wonder now whether Id feel the same way upon embarking on a re-read, as Im deeply ambivalent about'My Happy Life,'a book thats so painfully, mawkishly self-conscious that...

  Venice is the only place in Italy Ive been tounless the countryside scudding along outside the train window countsand its a city that straddles so many realities. With a foot on land and one in the ocean, its physically an in-between city; with its car-less streets and ancient architecture, its a place that...

Six years ago I was out at a bar with a girlfriend. I was there under the guise of being her lesbian partner, a roadblock against the advances of another girl my friend had unwittingly led on. Unfortunately I didnt play my role especially well, as I couldnt help but take notice of a handsome young man whod just entered the venue. To make...

RIASS stuff: Giveaway: Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz (US onlysorry, international readers!) Friend-zoning and Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons'Why, yes, I went there. On Instagram, travel writing and On A Chinese Screen by W Somerset Maugham Review: Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz'James Bond for kids. Review: The Best Man by Kristan Higgins'A...

  Earlier this morning I read that the term friend zone is set to enter the OED. Its a term that I stumbled over only relatively recently, probably within the last few months or so, and its only after spending some time thinking about and reading up on it this morning that I managed to pinpoint exactly what about it bothered...