I think it was my next-door neighbor and childhood best friend Jenni who gave me the 45 for Suzanne Vega’s “Luka.” It was either that or a 45 of Jack Wagner’s “Weatherman Says.” Those two songs came into my life at about the same time and I know Jenni gave me a record just for …
I have a pack of friends who write books for young-adult and middle-grade readers (all of whom you should read). This is not just because I’m incredibly blessed to know smart, talented people, but also because this is Minnesota and you can’t throw a lutefisk without hitting someone who writes books for people who aren’t …
For most of my life I’ve wanted to be a musicgeek. A musicgeek like guys are musicgeeks, memorizing record labels and producers and studio musicians like they’re some sort of baseball stats. I wanted to know how this influenced that and how that is derivative of the other thing. Wanting to know all that stuff …
There was a span of time in the early to mid-aughts where I would buy every man I was romantically interested in a copy of An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I probably hold the record for buying the most copies of this book. I could probably write a memoir called Books …
The Giant’s House is one of the books I’m re-reading as part of my Re-evaluating Personal Artifacts project. This is Part I of two or three. I don’t know yet how much I have to say about this book. It was the summer of 1996. Six months out of college, I was living with my …
I like to think Soul Coughing is a band I discovered all on my own. That I wasn’t turned on to them by a friend or because they were influenced by or influenced some other band I loved. This, of course, is a total lie. I remember exactly how and why I discovered Soul Coughing …
For the past few months, I’ve had a few ideas floating around in my head. I don’t even know if they’re actual ideas so much as figments of possible ideas. Here’s how it all started. Two summers ago my friend, The Theologian, and I were talking about books we loved in our twenties. He talked …