Auld Lang Syne
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we offer ways to avoid being kissless on New Year's Eve.
Rosecrans Baldwin
Uncivil Seasons
When people ask me for a book recommendation, wanting a good page-turner, I love to push Michael Malone's Uncivil Seasons. It's the opening segment in his Justin and Cuddy trilogy about two oddly matched detectives in North Carolina, and Malone produces a very rich reality
What Your Christmas Tree Says About You
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we address the great American class divider: Are your tree lights white or colored, or even (gasp) blinking?
Thinking of You
Friend of TMN Sam Brown has been making weird, witty, touching drawings for the last five years at Exploding Dog--each drawing inspired by a sentence submitted by a reader--and just in time for the holidays, he's released a book, Thinking of You, with more than 140
Edible San Francisco
New Yorkers like me believe we've got it the best among cities when it comes to dining out, but sadly there's no Big Apple comparison to Edible San Francisco, a homespun, food-nerdy journal for eaters in the Bay Area. Editor Bruce Cole has done a
Love Trouble
Students of Ian Frazier, fetch your Visas! How many young writers, humor lovers, Tina Brown haters have heard of Veronica Geng? If only for her piece "Love Trouble Is My Business"--a detective story made of sentences containing the phrases "Mr. Reagan" and "read Proust&
OJex juicer
It is sad, but I slobber over my OJex juicer. Compact, sexually alluring, and easy to clean, it makes me orange juice every morning (when I remember to buy oranges), and also provides fresh mixers at cocktail hour. Added bonus: It's heavier than a backhoe but smaller than
Maria's New Mexican Kitchen
Santa Fe is a small city of tourist squeezers wearing expensive belts, with lots of posh restaurants that were ready to sap my wallet. But among the joints I tried, and stands I hit on the street, I loved Maria's New Mexican Kitchen the most for its low-
Soft
If there's a TMN house band (besides Trail of Dead), it's Soft, a Brooklyn-based quintet currently blowing up with a finally-released EP. How five guys manage to recreate the Manchester sound--guitars ready for stadiums, hooks big enough for groupies--and still make it
Lectures on Shakespeare
Erudition you can't pray to match can be highly invigorating. Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare is a master class by one master on another--cobbled together from students' notes of his 1946 New School lectures, Auden works through the canon with wit, insight fueled by wide