Welcome to Clementine’s Weekly Reading Series, where Clem the hedgehog talks about whatever she is currently reading. This week: Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.
Read MoreIf brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.
Read MoreWhat do the the Ramones, Snoop Lion (né Dogg) and Vanessa L. Williams have in common? Very little — but they've all recorded Christmas songs! With this in mind, I present a Spotify playlist guaranteed to warm even the hardest-core humbug's heart.
Read MoreA weekly series that explores a featured theme — this month, it's "tongues" — by pairing classic quotations with urgent images. What recent news items inspired these textual/visual sets? Leave your guesses in the comments, and check back next Wednesday afternoon for the answers.
Read MoreEveryone from Galileo to Jim Morrison to countless Scrabble wordsmiths have played around with letters to form their perfect anagrams. We take literary-minded words and anagram them to find ... well, that's up to you. A deeper meaning? A hidden truth? Or just a happy coincidence?
Read MoreIn which I resume my quest to visit New York's oldest small businesses, guided by a long forgotten book. This time I head uptown for chocolates, bread and buttons, even catching a glimpse of that endangered specimen, the bookstore.
Read MoreThis holiday season, give more than another useless bauble: give skills. Read on for five courses — from bonsai growing at Brooklyn Botanic Garden to beer tasting at Jimmy's no. 43 — that teach curious things to curious people.
Read MoreSights, scenes, and sounds from the Mission District of San Francisco. In this week's overheard conversation, real estate, love, and public transportation intersect just outside my window.
Read MoreA weekly series that celebrates everyone’s favorite part of the author
reading: the Q&A. This week, Oliver Sacks, whose book Hallucinations came out this month, explains how he balances science and spirituality.
Secretly Canadian recently released I Know What Love Isn't, Jens Lekman's most self-assured album yet. As someone with a host of social anxieties, I started wondering if he was slowly overcoming his own. Join me as I examine his most nerve-addled songs to find the corresponding phobias — and the turns of phrase that make it all okay.
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