I have a dear friend, well a few dear friends in Florida but this specific Dear Friend is in Palm Beach. We were chatting about 3 weeks ago about casual shoes.  I told her what I prefer to wear, and she said, no problem, they carry that style at the local dollar store. Palm Beach has Dollar Sto...

An American English teacher has called for novels which use the word "nigger" to be removed from the high school curriculum now that Barack Obama has been elected president. John Foley, who teaches at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington, believes classics of American literature such as The...

John Steinbeck died on this day in 1968 at the age of 66, six years after he won the Nobel Prize, which even he himself didn’t expect. Critical scorn When asked by a reporter whether he believed he deserved the prize, he responded, "Frankly, no,� says Robert Gottlieb. In a New York Review of Boo...

Writing a book is one thing.  Finding a good title for it is another.  This can often take several attempts before the author gets it right and even then it can still be far from settled. Since the title (and cover design) of a book are considered marketing decisions rather than artistic o...

hey, guys, remember me! my name is matt, and i used to write things on the internet, back in february. and then i tried this revolutionary new plan of not looking at livejournal 'til i'd actually accomplished something at work ... and it turns out that if i didn't write on this blog, i'd probably be...

East of Eden By John Steinbeck This epic Steinbeck novel, though it took me about two weeks to finish, was well worth it. East of Eden is Steinbeck’s take on Genesis (including the fall of man and the story of Cain and Abel). It tells the story of Adam Trask, who takes on the part of the first Ada...