Oh, happy day, what is reaching the New Yorker about our fair city is our... phone book opt-out system. But this Book Bench blog post is good fleshing-out. It's also right on the money, saying that they're "a nuisance, a tolerated vestige of another era, or a useful tool, depending on your attitude and habits," but concluding with this: more ›

I know that when I was twenty-five much of my time was spent on booze, boys and friends—Téa Obreht, on the other hand, has spent her time crafting an eloquent and articulate debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, about the power of myth and reality in self-discovery. Born in the former Yugoslavia, Obreht has already been recognized by The New Yorker as one of the top twenty best American fiction writers under forty, and her work has been published in everything from Harper’s to The Guardian. Yes, I too am feeling slightly inadequate. more ›

co-horts Leon Wieseltier and Dale Peck--they accuse of writing literary criticism that "was wholly negative. And, it eventually became clear, indiscriminately so." more ›

*Carrie Clark mp3s here. more ›

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her book Dancing in the Streets, in which she explores the desire for collective joy (see photo), historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. more ›

If, like Seattlest, you're a dead-tree-media reading tool of a dying paradigm, you might have read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series "The Climate of Man" last spring when it was published in The New Yorker. If you prefer your dead-tree media in hardcover, however, you're in luck -- Kolbert's new book Field Notes from a Catastrophe collects all three parts in handy pulped-plant form. more ›

Seattlest used to subscribe to The New Yorker. Actually, Seattlest still does subscribe to The New Yorker, but since late September we've barely managed to keep up with the cartoons each week, let alone more substantial content. more ›

Bernard-Henri Levy occupies a position in France roughly comparable to...well, we don't have anyone like him. Rock star Bono comes close. Jon Stewart, maybe, except that BHL writes his own material. Sporting an unruly haircut, clad in the requisite uniform (black shirt, black blazer), he's a familiar figure on French TV, the embodiment of the Public Intellectual. Atlantic Monthly sent him on a year-long assignment to retrace the intellectual journey taken by de Tocqueville; the resulting tome, American Vertigo, has just been published, and BHL came to Seattle as part of the book tour. more ›

Seattle as a city is currently in danger of becoming the guy at the party with the undone zipper. When we come strutting out of the men's room anxious to talk about technology and the environment and progressive politics all anyone can see is the Discovery Institute hanging out of our pants. Seattlest cringes every time the national media references a particular "Seattle-based think tank" - They won't let us pretend for a minute that we're not ground zero of the Intelligent Design "controversy." more ›