This is just our annual reminder…honestly I think I first did this a year ago this week (it’s spring break)…that I don’t like Joan Didion or her writing. This book is…well it’s something. There’s a story here about a senator’s wife being in the limelight in overly unfair and invasive ways. She shows up in the paper several times a week and despite her attempts to remain closed off to the fame and infame, she is thrust otherwise. It’s a perfectly interesting story, and given […]
Fear and Paranoia in Burma
This book was a random acquisition and comes with a bit of backstory. I was reporting in Mandalay, central Burma, on a number of stories, and one of them required me to interview a comedy troupe that is known for staging vaudevillian shows that harpoons the country’s authoritarian regime. Now that Burma is considered a democracy, this comedy troupe is still putting up nightly shows for tourists, making fun of the fact that the current government is really a puppet for the military. One of […]

