Flatten Them Into A Set
"An Abstruse and Complicated Equation," April 10, 2024
title from Holly by Stephen King (2023)
James Dickey Poems (2012)
Emily Dickinson Poems (2012)
Deliverance by James Dickey (1970)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1838)
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (1904)
Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé (2024)
last line from Dicks: The Musical (2023)
"The Inky Gorgeousness," March 30 - April 2, 2024
title from "Welcome to 'Illinoise,' Land of Love, Grief and Zombies" by Jesse Green (March 7, 2024)
Chicago (2002)
Chicago lyrics (1970s)
last line from The World According to Color: A Cultural History by James Fox (2022)
"A Wonderfully Clarifying Effect," March 12-13, 2024
title from Holly by Stephen King (2023)
first line from "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince & The Revolution (1984)
A Good Marriage by Stephen King (2010)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
penultimate line from "The Healer" by Aimee Bender (1998)
last line from "Holiday" by Madonna (1983)
"The Syrupy Luxury of My Blood" (February 16, 2024)
title from "Last Love Letter to Houston" by Zella Price (February 1, 2024)
Les Miz (1985)
The Wiz (1974)
"Respiration of the Gulf," January 14, 2024
title from Duma Key by Stephen King (2008)
In Utero by Nirvana (1993)
Master of Puppets by Metallica (1986)
Yellow Submarine by The Beatles (1968)
last line from "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus (2019)
"Rising or Falling So Far," January 8, 2024
title from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (1994)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie (1972)
Elvis Presley's From Elvis in Memphis (33 1/3, 150) by Eric Wolfson (2020)
David Bowie's Low (33 1/3) by Hugo Wilcken (2005)
Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner (2020)
E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith by John Strausbaugh (1995)
I, Tina: My Life Story by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder (1986)
David Bowie: Mixing Memory and Desire by Kevin Cummins (2023)
My Love Story by Tina Turner (2018)
Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels by Stephen B. Heard (2020)
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (2000)
"Sunrise, Sunset" by Bright Eyes (2000)
"Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell (1970)
"An Uncanny Inner Fortitude," November 27, 2023 (#370)
title from "Until It Isn’t: An Interview with Antonya Nelson" by Giuseppe Taurino (2014)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Pieces of April (2003)
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (2003)
penultimate line from Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt (1964)
last line from Across the Universe by Beth Revis (2011)
"As Shameless As An Ocean," November 23, 2023 (#369)
title from "Love Dog" by TV on the Radio (2008)
Thank You For Smoking (2006)
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry (2022)
Friends 1.9, "The One Where Underdog Gets Away" (1994)
Friends 3.18, "The One With the Hypnosis Tape" (1997)
Friends 5.8, "The One with All the Thanksgivings" (1998)
one line from Thank You For Your Service by David Finkel (2013)
penultimate line from "Thank U" by Alanis Morisette (1998)
last line from "Fire Water Burn" by Bloodhound Gang (1996)
"The Dialect of Negation," October 17, 2023 (#368)
title from "tonite" by LCD Soundsystem (2017)
"The 'Banking' Concept of Education" by Paulo Freire (1968)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (1988)
penultimate line from Slow Reading in a Hurried Age by David Mikics (2013)
"An Appalling Wilderness of Worlds," October 5, 2023 (#367)
title from The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James (1902)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
"The Apotheosis Portfolio," October 4, 2023 (#366)
title adapted from Lisey's Story by Stephen King (2006)
Cujo by Stephen King (1981)
Coco (2017)
"A Big Psychological Milestone," December 31, 2022 (#365)
title from Fever Pitch (2005)
The Edge (1997)
Postcards from the Edge (1990)
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (2013)
The Edge of the Swamp: A Study in the Literature and Society of the Old South by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (1989)
penultimate line from "Edge of Reality" by Elvis Presley (1970)
last line from "The Promised Land" on Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen (1978)
"A Non-Sequitur Memoir," December 30, 2022 (#364)
title from overheard neighbor's phone conversation (December 30, 2022)
She-Devil (1989)
Mommie Dearest (1981)
A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
"A Moronic, Mealy Taste," December 29, 2022 (#363)
title from Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (2003)
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf (2007)
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff (1994)
The Complete Works by Virginia Woolf (2018)
"We Carry for Safety a Pairing," December 28, 2022 (#362)
title from Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard (2007)
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988)
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb (1992)
penultimate line from "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl (1954)
"The True Color of My Thoughts," December 27, 2022 (#361)
title from Danse Macabre by Stephen King (1981)
Fever Pitch (2005)
Pitch Perfect (2012)
last line from Picture Perfect (1997)
"A Pharmaceutical Solution," December 26, 2022 (#360)
title from overheard neighbor's phone conversation (December 26, 2022)
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (2003)
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell (2006)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2015)
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (2019)
"The Anniversary of My Portentous Birth," December 25, 2022 (#359)
title from The Simpsons 8.19, "Grade School Confidential" (April 6, 1997)
The 25th Hour by David Benioff (2001)
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb (2008)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1998)
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (2019)
"A Suitable Uterus to Rent," December 24, 2022 (#358)
title from The Big Bang Theory 11.16, "The Neonatal Nomenclature" (March 1, 2018)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (2007)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
"A Certain Understated Stupidity," December 23, 2022 (#357)
title from Seinfeld 9.10, "The Strike" (December 18, 1997)
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark (2004)
The Music School by John Updike (1966)
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (2019)
penultimate line from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett (1994)
last line from Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem (1994)
"Halt Heavy Hauling," December 22, 2022 (#356)
title adjusted from Holt Heavy Hauling truck (December 22, 2022)
Small Fry: A Memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs (2018)
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)
"Somewhat Synonymously," December 21, 2022 (#355)
original title
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (1999)
last line from Mother! (2017)
"When We Rise," December 20, 2022 (#354)
title from "Colours" by Donovan (1965)
"Dolan's Cadillac" by Stephen King (1993)
Donovan's Reef (1963)
penultimate line from Pink Cadillac (1989)
last line from "Pink Cadillac" by Bruce Springsteen (1984)
"Sneering Yet Humane," December 19, 2022 (#353)
title from "More Deadly Decadence in 'The White Lotus'” by Inkoo Kang (November 1, 2022)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)
Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy (1971)
"Multiple Rounds of Wishful Thinking," December 18, 2022 (#352)
title from Elvis, Marilyn, and the Space Aliens: Icons on Screen in Nevada by Robin Holabird (2017)
The Fouth Angel by John Rechy (1972)
The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett (2009)
"Creator of the Clam Chair," December 17, 2022 (#351)
title from Belizean billboard (December 17, 2022)
Born to Run by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon (1992)
A Time to Die by Wilbur Smith (1989)
last line from Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (2016)
"Political Megalomania," December 16, 2022 (#350)
title from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
The Winter of our Discontent by John Steinbeck (1961)
Barrier Island by John D. MacDonald (1986)
"A Complicated Calibration," December 15, 2022 (#349)
title from "The Extreme Pleasures of the 'White Lotus' Season 2 Finale" by Naomi Fry (December 12, 2022)
A Buddhist Bible ed. by Dwight Goddard (1938)
Ancient Records and the Bible by J. McKee Adams, PhD (1945)
"Enjoying Reputation, Sweet Renown," December 14, 2022 (#348)
title from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva (700)
Roman Civilization: Volume I The Republic ed. by Naphtali Lewis & Meyer Reinhold (1959)
Droll Stories by Honoré de Balzac trans. by J. Lewis May (1978)
Round Up: The Stories of Ring W. Lardner by Ring Lardner (1929)
Kenneth Grahame: A Biography by Peter Green (1959)
"Jumpers in a Plaid Agitation," December 13, 2022 (#347)
title from “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell (2006)
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1987)
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk MD (2014)
"Hack to Show Knife," December 12, 2022 (#346)
title and one line from 12 Angry Men (1957)
The Twelve by Justin Cronin (2012)
Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
penultimate line from Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1602)
"Material and Canonical Manifestations," December 11, 2022 (#345)
title from "Two Ships" by T.C. Boyle (1985)
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (2017)
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos (1925)
"Raises Blood Pressure," December 10, 2022 (#344)
title from The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul (2021)
Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders (2013)
10:04: A Novel by Ben Lerner (2014)
"The Affectless, Confounded Version," December 9, 2022 (#343)
title from "The Best Performances of 2022" by Michael Schulman (December 9, 2022)
Ransom by Jay McInerney (1985)
Ransom by David Malouf (2009)
Ransom (1996)
"False Positives and Negatives," December 8, 2022 (#342)
title from UH student paper (December 5, 2022)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1878)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)
"A Trapdoor for Later," December 7, 2022 (#341)
title from The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981)
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett (1994)
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick (1986)
last line from "Led Zeppelin Gets Into Your Soul" by James Wood (January 24, 2022)
"In An Apprehensive Pretzel," December 6, 2022 (#340)
title from "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" by Karen Russell (2014)
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ridley Pearson (2001)
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso (2015)
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Che Guevara (1992)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)
"A Phony, Tony Name," December 5, 2022 (#339)
title from "The Great Fratsby" by Rachel Syme (December 26, 2013)
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (2014)
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (2020)
"To Puncture Pomposity," December 4, 2022 (#338)
title from Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay by Louis Cantor (2005)
Shout!: The Beatles in their Generation by Philip Norman (1981)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)
"The Toxicity That Sent Them Into Exile," December 3, 2022 (#337)
title from "Why I Quit Elon Musk's Twitter" by Jelani Cobb (November 27, 2022)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (2010)
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
"Pretty Neatly Cleaved," December 2, 2022 (#336)
original title
Journals by Kurt Cobain (2002)
The Journals of John Cheever by John Cheever (1991)
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker by Alice Walker (2022)
"With Ominous Calm, Smoothed," December 1, 2022 (#335)
title from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
Shameless (2011-2021)
Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)
"An Eclectic Collection," November 30, 2022 (#334)
title from by "Which Rock Star Will Historians of the Future Remember?" by Chuck Klosterman (May 23, 2016)
Shame by Salman Rushdie (1983)
Shame (2011)
"Don't Need a Switchblade Comb," November 29, 2022 (#333)
title overheard at Cactus Records (November 29, 2022)
The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (1987)
Three by Valérie Perrin (2022)
Three Amigos (1986)
3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)
3000 Years of Longing (2022)
"Ostensibly the Opposite," November 28, 2022 (#332)
title from Elvis by Albert Goldman (1981)
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (2017)
Born in the USA (33 1/3) by Geoffrey Himes (2005)
Burn This Book: Pen Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word ed. by Toni Morrison (2009)
"A Variety of Invectives," November 27, 2022 (#331)
title from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1838)
Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut (1838)
Moby-Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville (1851)
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick (1975)
"Honey" by Moby (1998)
"The Milky White Background," November 26, 2022 (#330)
title from "Turning Youtube Comments Into Art" by Max Norman (November 23, 2022)
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
Locusts and Wild Honey by John Burroughs (1871)
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (2022)
penultimate line from "In 'n' Out of Grace" by Mudhoney (1988)
last line from "You Will Hear the Locust Sing" by Joe Hill (2004)
"A Hulking Presence Shuffling," November 25, 2022 (#329)
title from Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King ed. by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (1992)
Friday (1995)
Freaky Friday (2003)
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2018)
penultimate line from Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (2018)
last line from The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
"Tearing Into Carrion," November 24, 2022 (#328)
title from Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel (2013)
Thank You for Smoking (2005)
last line from While You Were Sleeping (1995)
"Include the Following," November 23, 2022 (#327)
title from city resident notification (2022)
Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin (1952)
Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould (1998)
"This Tradition of Innovation," November 22, 2022 (#326)
2666 by Roberto Bolaño (2004)
11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)
"A Very Scheduled Person," November 21, 2022 (#325)
title from The Kingcast #150, "Insomnia with Danika XIX" (November 2, 2022)
Space by James Michener (1982)
The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick (1966)
last line from "The Crack-Up" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)
"A Compendium of Quotations," November 20, 2022 (#324)
original title
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain (2000)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963)
"Repulsive and Irresistible," November 19, 2022 (#323)
title from Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus (1991)
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (1954)
Under the Dome by Stephen King (2009)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker by Alice Walker (2022)
"An Intuition of the Abyss," November 18, 2022 (#322)
title from Michael Silverblatt audiobook interview with Joyce Carol Oates for Blonde (2000)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (2021)
Roadwork by Richard Bachman (1981)
The Road to Character: The Humble Journey to an Excellent Life by David Brooks (2015)
"To Humble Future Me," November 17, 2022 (#321)
title from PVA student exercise (November 14, 2022)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959)
Daisy Miller by Henry James (1879)
Rose Madder by Stephen King (1995)
last line from Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry (1987)
"A Forward-Looking Beast," November 16, 2022 (#320)
title from wealth manager (November 16, 2022)
The Little Black Book of Style by Nina García (2007)
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (1959)
"With This Pathetic Benediction," November 15, 2022 (#319)
title from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood (1969)
Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates (2012)
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (2008)
penultimate line from Bound (1996)
last line from Bound by Antonya Nelson (2010)
"Keep the Menu Changing," November 14, 2022 (#318)
title from "Record bar and lounge 93’ Til on the rise in Montrose" by Sofia Gonzalez (March 14, 2022)
John Crow's Devil by Marlon James (2005)
A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin (2005)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (2010)
"An Expensively Irrelevant Gloss," November 13, 2022 (#317)
title from "Flash Gordon (film)" Wikipedia page
Don't Worry Darling (2022)
I Am No One You Know: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (2004)
last line from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
"A Family of Idioms," November 12, 2022 (#316)
title from "Eating crow" Wikipedia page
Tinkers by Paul Harding (2008)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (1974)
Peter Pan by John M. Barrie (1911)
"A Tinker's Damn: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and The Signifying Monkey Twenty Years Later" by Joyce Ann Joyce (2008)
"Obscured by Euphemism," November 11, 2022 (#315)
title from "Should Ovid’s Metamorphoses Have a Trigger Warning?" by Daniel Mendelsohn (November 7, 2022)
Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (1974)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (1974)
"Obstinate with Mindlessness," November 10, 2022 (#314)
title from PVA student story (2022)
Detroit Rock City (1999)
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue (1996)
penultimate line from The Story of Motown by Peter Benjaminson (1979)
last line from 8 Mile (2002)
"No Trust in Tomorrow," November 9, 2022 (#313)
title from "Dreidel" by Don McLean (1972)
Double Trouble (1966)
Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives by Greil Marcus (2001)
Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halpern and John Heilemann (2013)
last line from Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
"Poorly Insulated Walls," November 8, 2022 (#312)
title from PVA student story (2022)
Election (1999)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution--And What We Can Do About It by Elizabeth Holtzman with Cynthia L. Cooper (2013)
"To Help Ease Congestion," November 7, 2022 (#311)
title from "Houstonians celebrate Astros' win with downtown Championship Parade" (November 7, 2022)
The Rookie (2002)
Rookie of the Year (1993)
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (2009)
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
"What a Gift from God," November 6, 2022 (#310)
title from a friend's email (November 6, 2022)
Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America by Stephen L. Klineberg (2020)
The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston by Marquis James (1929)
last line from "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (1845)
"I Should've Suspected Something," November 5, 2022 (#309)
title from The River Wild (1994)
Whiskey River (Take My Mind): The True Story of Texas Honky-Tonk by Johnny Bush (2007)
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (2001)
River House: A Memoir by Sarahlee Lawrence (2010)
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (1999)
"Facilitating Intimacy," November 4, 2022 (#308)
original title
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (2012)
Wild Nights! Stories about the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates (1985)
penultimate line from Wild Things (1998)
last line from The River Wild (1994)
"Characteristic of the Context," November 3, 2022 (#307)
title from "The emergence and historical decay of the mash up" by Charles Fairchild (2017)
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman (2003)
Top Horn: Turned Gay by the Unicorn Pilots by Chuck Tingle (2015)
"The Life of Chuck" by Stephen King (2020)
"Kind of Unequivocally," November 2, 2022 (#306)
title from "Jorge Pardo’s Fanciful Folly Exhibition Illuminates Houston" by Bryan Rindfuss (October 28, 2022)
Seven (1995)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1989)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014)
"Established Intellectual Arenas," November 1, 2022 (#305)
title from "Fans and Critics: Greil Marcus's Mystery Train as Rock 'n' Roll History" by Mark Mazullo (1997)
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago (1991)
A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel (1994)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1989)
Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin (2015)
"Worlds That Aren't There," October 31, 2022 (#304)
title from "Stephen King: Halloween's Answer to Santa Claus" by Bryon Cahill (2005)
The Craft (1996)
Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses (2021)
last line from "The Dreams in the Witch House" by H.P. Lovecraft (1932)
"Rant-Like Spirals of Praise," October 30, 2022 (#303)
title from "On Pitchfork's 'Punisher' Album Review" by Hazel Britton Dansby (October 27, 2022)
God: A Biography by Jack Miles (1995)
I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé by Michael Arceneaux (2018)
Holy Cow by David Duchovny (2015)
last line from I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities and Other Stuff by Abbi Jacobson (2018)
"Illness Expelling the Toxins," October 29, 2022 (#302)
title from "Trisha McFarland and the Tough Tootsie" by Matthew M. Holman (2014)
Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta (2022)
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Saving the World by Anand Giridharadas (2018)
last line from Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant (2013)
"For the Support of Animated Existence," October 28, 2022 (#301)
title from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1898)
Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola (2015)
Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams (1982)
"The Grip of a Corrective Spirit," October 27, 2022 (#300)
title from "American Culture is Trash Culture" by Wesley Morris (October 12, 2022)
Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella (1980)
Joe College by Tom Perrotta (2000)
penultimate line from "Pop Art" by Joe Hill (2005)
"Exactly the Wrong Direction," October 26, 2022 (#299)
title from "The Great Stephen King Reread: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Grady Hendrix (July 24, 2015)
The Secret of Evil by Roberto Bolaño (2007)
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí by Salvador Dalí (1942)
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott (2019)
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring (2019)
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore (2014)
Secrets of Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson (2012)
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Secret Pitch by Donald Sobol (1965)
"A Recollection of an Encounter," October 25, 2022 (#298)
title from "Narrowing Valley" by Jonathan Lethem (October 24, 2022)
Fury by Salman Rushdie (2001)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)
Fate, Time and Language: An Essay on Free Will by David Foster Wallace (2010)
"Beats to a Double Pulse," October 24, 2022 (#297)
title from Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism by Heidi Strengell (2005)
"Sometimes They Come Back" by Stephen King (1974)
Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder by Jerold J. Kreisman, M.D., and Hal Straus (2004)
"Doses of Utopian Excess," October 23, 2022 (#296)
title from "Auditory Ambivalence: Music in the Western from High Noon to Brokeback Mountain" by Michael J. Blouin (2010)
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (1623)
To Tame a Land by Louis L'Amour (1940)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (1985)
Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (2015)
"A Ghost of Both, a Fusion," October 22, 2022 (#295)
title from The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
The Girls by Emma Cline (2016)
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (2019)
City of Night by John Rechy (1963)
Night Shift by Stephen King (1978)
last line from "Night Moves" by Bob Seger (1977)
"Employed Evolutionarily Explicable Cues," October 21, 2022 (#294)
title from "Disney's Shifting Visions of Villainy from the 1990s to the 2010s: A Biocultural Analysis" by Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Sarah Helene Schmidt (2019)
Raging Bull (1980)
Bull Durham (1988)
"In a Status-Obsessed City," October 20, 2022 (#293)
title from "Sex, Scandal, and Sisterhood: Fifty Years of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders" by Sarah Hepola (2022)
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (2019)
The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen (1988)
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (2009)
"The Nourishing Consolation of Recognition," October 19, 2022 (#292)
title from "What Ghost Stories Taught Me About My Queer Self" by Nell Stevens (October 15, 2022)
I'm Starved for You by Margaret Atwood (2012)
Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem by Anthony Bozza (2003)
"Something That Can Come Between Us," October 18, 2022 (#291)
title from Elvis (2022)
Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus (1991)
Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner (2017)
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick (1986)
"Everything That I've Been Doing," October 17, 2022 (#290)
title from "Confessions Part I" by Usher (2004)
The Confessions of St. Augustine trans. Rex Warner (1969)
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick (1975)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (2004)
"Could Not Be Compared," October 16, 2022 (#289)
title from Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick (2014)
Freedom by Daniel Suarez (2010)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (2010)
The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri (2019)
"An Ontological Orientation," October 15, 2022 (#288)
title from "Still searching for the Promised Land: placing women in Bruce Springsteen's lyrical landscapes" by Pamela Moss (2011)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares (2001)
Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011)
Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll by Marc Dolan (2012)
"Sprung Into Being," October 14, 2022 (#287)
title from I'm Starved for You by Margaret Atwood (2012)
Big Driver by Stephen King (2010)
Baby Driver (2017)
Taxi Driver (1976)
"Perverse to Find Magnificence," October 13, 2022 (#286)
title from "Elvis Broke Fashion Boundaries, Too" by Guy Trebay (June 23, 2022)
Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster by Helen Andrews (2021)
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow (2019)
"Defiant Isolationism," October 12, 2022 (#285)
title from "Teenagers Are Telling Us That Something Is Wrong With America" by Jamieson Webster (October 11, 2022)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)
Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps by Seirian Sumner (2022)
last line from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)
"Give Me Time to Think," October 11, 2022 (#284)
title from "Dancing with Myself" by Billy Idol (1981)
Strangers to Ourselves by Julia Kristeva (1988)
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson (2002)
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories We Tell Ourselves by Rachel Aviv (2022)
"Roles to Play and Rules to Break," October 10, 2022 (#283)
title from Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music by Greil Marcus (1975)
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (2015)
Small Fry: A Memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs (2018)
"Cultivate a Messianic Persona," October 9, 2022 (#282)
title from "The Troublesome Legacy of the Early Romantics" by Nikhil Krishnan (September 26, 2022)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)
Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show by Richard Zoglin (2019)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
"Colorful Covers Called," October 8, 2022 (#281)
title from "Mr. Harrigan's Phone" by Stephen King (2020)
Asymmetry: A Novel by Lisa Halliday (2018)
Severance: A Novel by Ling Ma (2018)
last line from "Supersymmetry" by Arcade Fire (2013)
"A Vain Effort to Stave," October 7, 2022 (#280)
title from Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (1994)
Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places by Ursula K. LeGuin (1989)
More Than Dancing: Essays on Afro-American Music and Musicians ed. by Irene V. Jackson (1985)
"Forcibly Feminized," October 6, 2022 (#279)
title from PVA student (October 6, 2022)
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado (2017)
Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So (2021)
last line from Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife by David Eagleman (2009)
"How Controlled the Feeling Is," October 5, 2022 (#278)
title from Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music by Greil Marcus (1975)
Elvis by Albert Goldman (1981)
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (1994)
"Your Indebtedness Will Pyramid," October 4, 2022 (#277)
title from Speedway (1968)
Intimations by Zadie Smith (2020)
Indignation by Philip Roth (2008)
last line from Advanced Elvis Course by C.A. Conrad (2009)
"'Remember When We Used to Play?'" October 3, 2022 (#276)
title from "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Nancy Sinatra (1966)
Dancing After Hours: Stories by Andre Dubus (1996)
Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places by Ursula K. LeGuin (1989)
penultimate line from The Dancing Mind by Toni Morrison (1996)
last line from A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (2011)
"Soup Bra," October 2, 2022 (#275)
title from vanity plate
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut (1990)
The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk (2009)
"Believe Me I Know," October 1, 2022 (#274)
title from God Help the Child by Toni Morrison (2015)
Life After God by Douglas Coupland (1994)
Lost Joy by Camden Joy (2002)
Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams (2013)
"The Diminishing Tide of Rats," September 30, 2022 (#273)
title from Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022)
Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family: The Inside Story of an American Dynasty by Roger Stone (2016)
The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann (2000)
"Against the Destructive Influence," September 29, 2022 (#272)
title from Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From the Sopranos and the Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad by Brett Martin (2013)
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture ed. by Roxane Gay (2018)
Bad Education (2020)
last line from Bad Teacher (2011)
"Relentless Blankness Comes To," September 28, 2022 (#271)
title from "How Fans Created the Voice of the Internet" by Katy Waldman (June 28, 2022)
Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon (1984)
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (2019)
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (2018)
"A Sour Middle-Aged Hermit," September 27, 2022 (#270)
title from "Superfans: A Love Story" by Michael Schulman (September 9, 2019)
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje (1970)
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson (2006)
The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (2005)
Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010)
last line from Kids (1995)
"Loss Becomes My Gain," September 26, 2022 (#269)
title from "Harvester of Sorrows" by Metallica (1988)
Imperfect Strangers by Stuart Woods (1994)
The Gift of Imperfection by Brené Brown (2010)
penultimate line from Perfect Strangers 4.6, "The 'King' and I" (February 24, 1989)
last line from Stranger Things 4.2, "Vecna's Curse" (May 27, 2022)
"What Produces Misplaced Nostalgia," September 25, 2022 (#268)
title from "Was Kanye Right?" by Brandi Collins Dexter (2022)
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie (2013)
The UnAmericans: Stories by Molly Antopol (2014)
last line from The Americans 5.13, "The Soviet Division" (May 30, 2017)
"A Hog of a Swell," September 24, 2022 (#267)
title from Edge of the Earth ep. 4, "The Great Unknown" (August 2, 2022)
Transatlantic by Colum McCann (2013)
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (2009)
last line from Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (1999)
"Gorgeous Digital Apparitions," September 23, 2022 (#266)
title from "Liking What You See: A Documentary" by Ted Chiang (2002)
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein (2011)
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch (1974)
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981)
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895)
"The Authority of a Revelation," September 22, 2022 (#265)
title from "The Second Bakery Attack" by Haruki Murakami (1986)
The Power by Naomi Alderman (2016)
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by John Meacham (2015)
The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh (2007)
last line from The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018)
"The Permanent Atomization of the Internet," September 21, 2022 (#264)
title from "May He Have Your Attention? ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ at 20" by Jeff Weiss (2020)
Unraveling the Mysteries of The Big Bang Theory (Updated Edition): An Unabashedly Unauthorized TV Show Companion by George Beahm (2014)
Bang Crunch: Stories by Neil Smith (2007)
Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader by Lester Bangs (2003)
last line from The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)
"It Goes Categorically Deeper," September 20, 2022 (#263)
title from Badass Counseling (2022)
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore (2018)
Truth is a Lonely Warrior: Unmasking the Forces Behind Global Destruction by James Perloff (2013)
A Delicate Truth by John le Carré (2013)
Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett (2004)
"More Harmless Forms," September 19, 2022 (#262)
title from White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side by James Snead (1994)
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (2017)
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas (2006)
Turtles all the Way Down by John Green (2017)
last line from Writing down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg (1986)
"Alternative to the Reckless Path," September 18, 2022 (#261)
title from The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz (2012)
Misery by Stephen King (1987)
Purity by Jonathan Franzen (2015)
"Isolate the Asshole," September 17, 2022 (#260)
title from wife
Escape from Tenopia #1: Tenopia Island by Edward Packard (1986)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Escape from New York (1981)
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
"To Activate the Mechanism," September 16, 2022 (#259)
title from "Foster, You're Dead!" by Philip K. Dick (1955)
Blade Runner (1982)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Easy Rider (1969)
"The Same Amount of Real," September 15, 2022 (#258)
title from "The Subversive Joy of Lil Nas X's Gay Pop Stardom" by Jazmine Hughes (July 7, 2021)
The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay (2019)
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay (2014)
The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge by Gay Talese (1964)
"With Marginal Shame," September 14, 2022 (#257)
title from PVA student email (2022)
Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World by Walker Percy (1971)
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker by Alice Walker (2022)
Cherry by Nico Walker (2018)
"The Knotty Symbiosis Between," September 13, 2022 (#256)
title from "America Has a Problem and Beyoncé Ain't It" by Wesley Morris (July 31, 2022)
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston (1994)
The Dead Zone by Stephen King (1979)
End Zone by Don DeLillo (1972)
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen (2006)
Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan by William T. Vollmann (2011)
"Involve Considerable Discomfort," September 12, 2022 (#255)
title from Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022)
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders (2005)
The Brief Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain (2006)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011)
"A Clear Sonic Signature," September 11, 2022 (#254)
title from "The DJ Auteur" by Chuck Klosterman (June 18, 2006)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (2011)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Hatari! (1962)
Oil! by Upton Sinclair (1926)
"Veering So Severely," September 10, 2022 (#253)
original title
Love Me Tender (1956)
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
The Night in Question: Stories by Tobias Wolff (1996)
Night Shift by Stephen King (1978)
last line from Last Night: Stories by James Salter (2005)
"Hiss and Fizzle Out," September 9, 2022 (#252)
title from PVA student exercise (September 9, 2022)
"Beachworld" by Stephen King (1984)
The Beach by Alex Garland (1996)
Beaches (1988)
"The Strongest Force in Nature," September 8, 2022 (#251)
title from "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant (1892)
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis (1983)
Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker (1987)
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (2011)
King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov (1928)
last line from For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940)
"These Repeating Patterns," September 7, 2022 (#250)
title from "The emergence and historical decay of the mash up" by Charles Fairchild (2017)
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869)
My Heart Is An Idiot: Essays by Davy Rothbart (2004)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000)
"The Child Babbles, Rhythmically," September 6, 2022 (#249)
title from "Stephen King: Powers of Horror" by Clare Hanson (1998)
Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín (2006)
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (1913)
Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful & Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman (2014)
"It Was Sand, He Saw," September 5, 2022 (#248)
title from Misery by Stephen King (1987)
Unraveling the Mysteries of The Big Bang Theory (Updated Edition) by George Beahm (2014)
A Theory of Light and Matter: Stories by Andrew Porter (2008)
last line from Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (2009)
"Preoccupied with that Revelation," September 4, 2022 (#247)
title from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (1988)
Cat's Eye by Stephen King (1985)
"In a Piecemeal Fashion," September 3, 2022 (#246)
title from "'Your Legs Must Be Singing Grand Opera': Masculinity, Masochism, and Stephen King's Misery" by Douglas Keesey (2002)
American Gigolo (1980)
American Psycho (2000)
American Beauty (1999)
American Pie (1999)
last line from Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo (1999)
"The Oracles and Arbiters of All," September 2, 2022 (#245)
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler (1995)
The New Me by Halle Butler (2019)
From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert Olen Butler (2005)
"A Driving Force that Can Influence," September 1, 2022 (#244)
title from Quora thread by Dave Lepage (2022)
The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith (2022)
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (1984)
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger (1990)
"A Unique Visual Music," August 31, 2022 (#243)
title from "'Johnny Guitar': One of the Greatest Westerns and the Furthest Extreme of the Hollywood System" by Richard Brody (August 30, 2022)
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown (2021)
My Heart is an Idiot: Essays by Davy Rothbart (2004)
Laughing to Keep from Crying by June Benefield (1972)
"Reaction to a Perceived Violation," August 30, 2022 (#242)
title from "The Stand: Appropriate This" by scrola (October 24, 2020)
She, A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard (1886)
Her by Spike Jonze (2013)
Him Her Him Again The End of Him by Patricia Marx (2006)
last line from She: Understanding Feminine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson (1976)
"The Point Where Meaning Collapses," August 29, 2022 (#241)
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman (2003)
Silver Bullet by Stephen King (1985)
"Due to the Disciplines of Scansion," August 28, 2022 (#240)
title from "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" by Stephen King (2001)
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013)
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman (2003)
one line from The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (1996)
one line from "On Keeping a Notebook" by Joan Didion (1968)
last line from Golden Years by Stephen King (1991)
"Communicating Like a Grown-Up," August 27, 2022 (#239)
title from Dear Mr. You by Mary Louise-Parker (2015)
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990)
The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse (2010)
last line from "Vogue" by Madonna (1990)
"Projecting Outward Like Ectoplasm," August 26, 2022 (#238)
title from "Twilight of the Superheroes" by Deborah Eisenberg (2006)
Superfudge by Judy Blume (1980)
Superweasel by Clifford B. Hicks (1974)
Supergifted by Gordon Korman (2018)
last line from Superman (1978)
"Openly Biased Humanity," August 25, 2022 (#237)
title from "Words and Music: Our 60 Favorite Music Books" by Pitchfork.com (2011)
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (1986)
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth (1979)
The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton by Jefferson Morley (2017)
Harlot's Ghost: A Novel by Norman Mailer (1991)
"Highly Educated American Generic," August 24, 2022 (#236)
title from "How the Hell Do We Fix the Creative Writing Workshop?" by Jennifer Schaffer (2021)
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock 'n' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'n' Roll by Lester Bangs (1987)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)
"Cursing the Obscurity," August 23, 2022 (#235)
title from Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond (2010)
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)
The Tar Baby by Jerome Charyn (1973)
Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz (2004)
"Before Shooting Began," August 22, 2022 (#234)
title from title from Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television by Simon Brown (2018)
In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders (2006)
Adaptation. (2002)
"Our Heedless Rapacity," August 21, 2022 (#233)
title from "The Elephant in the Courtroom" by Lawrence Wright (February 28, 2022)
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter (2017)
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1847)
"For Such an Assorted Assemblage," August 20, 2022 (#232)
title from Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps by Seirian Sumner (2022)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871)
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (1990)
The Passage by Justin Cronin (2010)
"Insisting on a Somatic Sympathy," August 19, 2022 (#231)
title from Brian De Palma's Split Screen by Douglas Keesey (2015)
Dick (1999)
The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin (1971)
Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville (1851)
penultimate line from In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir by Dick Cheney (2011)
"With the Crass Recklessness," August 18, 2022 (#230)
title from "Human Blues and Reproductive Self-Determination" by Kaitlyn Teer (2022)
The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams (2015)
The Privileges by Jonathan Dee (2010)
penultimate line from A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
"Knockin Basquiats off the Walls," August 17, 2022 (#229)
title from "I'm That Girl" by Beyoncé (2022)
WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy by Michael Knox Beran (2021)
Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps by Seirian Sumner (2022)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2001)
The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka (2022)
"A Symphony of Imagery," August 16, 2022 (#228)
original title
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway (1937)
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (2020)
"No Hobos Aboard," August 15, 2022 (#227)
title from The Big Bang Theory 7.15, "The Locomotive Manipulation" (February 6, 2014)
Batman Returns (1992)
Return to Oz (1985)
The Return of the Jedi (1983)
last line from The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (1878)
"A Knife Fight for a Citrus Drink," August 14, 2022 (#226)
title from Seinfeld 8.8, "The Chicken Roaster" (1996)
Ice Station Zebra (1968)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
At the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (2011)
"These Fresh Passages," August 13, 2022 (#225)
title from The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems by Michael Ondaatje (1970)
Endgame by Samuel Beckett (1957)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)
The End by Salvatore Scibona (2008)
The Game (1997)
"Somewhat Cursorily," August 12, 2022 (#224)
title from Stephen King's Gothic by John Sears (2011)
The Long Walk by Brian Castner (2012)
The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (1979)
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (2012)
Billy Summers by Stephen King (2021)
last line from "The Story of Billy" by grandmother (1990)
"Pressure Washers Purchase from Rear," August 11, 2022 (#223)
title from highway sign + ice cream truck (2022)
first line from "Rocket 88" by Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston (1951)
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (2002)
Fox 8 by George Saunders (2013)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer (2014)
last line from "From a Buick 6" by Bob Dylan (1965)
"Mendacious Deceit, Naturally Essenced," August 10, 2022 (#222)
title from Adaptation. (2002) + LaCroix can (2022)
The Reivers: A Reminiscence by William Faulkner (1962)
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman (2013)
"Such a Trip as This," August 9, 2022 (#221)
title from To Tame the Land by Louis L'Amour (1940)
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (1934)
The Post (2017)
The Ring (2002)
The Fireman by Joe Hill (2016)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
"You Have Nasty Braces," August 8, 2022 (#220)
title from high school freshman bestie (1999)
On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein (2019)
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter (2017)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000)
Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks (2017)
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey (2020)
"The Last of Us Still Live," August 7, 2022 (#219)
title from Candyman (2021)
Sam the Cat: Stories by Matthew Klam (2000)
Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee (2012)
"Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian (2017)
"Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie (1982)
"Understanding Sometime," August 6, 2022 (#218)
title from "I Can Dream" by Elvis Presley (1968)
Application for Release from the Dream by Tony Hoagland (2015)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King (1993)
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (2001)
"Queer Flamboyance and Libidinal Femininity," August 5, 2022 (#217)
title from "Beyoncé’s 'Renaissance' Shocks Some Life Into a Culture Gone Inert" by Carrie Battan (August 3, 2022)
To Tame A Land by Louis L'Amour (1940)
Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss (2009)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (2011)
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon (1990)
"Inadvertently Evoking," August 4, 2022 (#216)
title from "The Laughing Place is a Rabbit Hole to Disney's Animal KINGdom, Part III: The Shining" by scrola (August 4, 2022)
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud (1958)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924)
The Age of Magic by Ben Okri (2014)
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (2005)
last line from Of Magic and Mice: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin (1980)
"Dissemble My Distress," August 3, 2022 (#215)
title from Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin (1968)
Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov (1986)
Transition Dreams by Greg Egan (2003)
Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson (2011)
Dream Stuff: Stories by David Malouf (2000)
"Hoping to Take You Away," August 2, 2022 (#214)
title from "The Magical Mystery Tour" by the Beatles (1967)
Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music by Greil Marcus (1975)
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993)
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (1994)
Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson (2011)
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux (2008)
"Nodal Points and Fault Lines," August 1, 2022 (#213)
title from "What to Stream: The Greatest Directors of Hollywood’s Studio-System Golden Age" by Richard Brody (July 23, 2022)
The Spot: Stories by David Means (2010)
The Drop by Dennis Lehane (2014)
Drop City by T.C. Boyle (2003)
Bin Laden's Bald Spot: Stories by Brian Doyle (2011)
"Signifiers with Nothing Signified," July 31, 2022 (#212)
title from Eyes Wide Shut by Michel Chion (2002)
Fear (1996)
Cape Fear (1991)
Fear and Desire (1953)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
"The Equivocal Chrysalis," July 30, 2022 (#211)
title from Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan (1932)
Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories by Joan Silber (2004)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (1993)
Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles Cross (2001)
Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak (2009)
"Hard, Unvarnished Truths," July 29, 2022 (#210)
title from Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick (2014)
Last Ride to Graceland by Kim Wright (2016)
Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South by Margaret Renkl (2021)
"Masquerading as Crystals," July 28, 2022 (#209)
title from Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould (1991)
Conversations with Grace Paley (1997)
Disgrace by J.M. Coetze (1999)
last line from B is for Beer by Tom Robbins (2009)
"Mix Me Some Metaphors," July 27, 2022 (#208)
title from Danse Macabre by Stephen King (1981)
The Room and the Chair by Lorraine Adams (2010)
The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg (1984)
"Composed of Hormones," July 26, 2022 (#207)
original title
The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings (1922)
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (2018)
Room by Emma Donaghue (2010)
last line from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (1929)
"Regarded as Arbitrary," July 25, 2022 (#206)
title from Room 237 (2012)
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (1922)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (1956)
last line from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (2010)
"Since the Silent Era," July 24, 2022 (#205)
title from Seinfeld 7.10, "The Gum" (December 12, 1995)
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld (2016)
Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace (2004)
last line from NW: A Novel by Zadie Smith (2012)
"A Predetermined Narrative," July 23, 2022 (#204)
title from Stephen King and American History by Tony Magistrale and Michael J. Blouin (2020)
Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie (2003)
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (2003)
"This Opera Forevermore," July 22, 2022 (#203)
title from "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes (2003)
The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker (1911)
Snow White by Donald Barthelme (1967)
"Such Lovely Sobriquets," July 21, 2022 (#202)
title from Stephen King: America's Storyteller by Tony Magistrale (2010)
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (1996)
Cash McCall by Cameron Hawley (1955)
two lines from The Tar Baby by Jerome Charyn (1973)
"In Splendid Isolation," July 20, 2022 (#201)
title from "White Man's Burden: Eminem's Movie Debut in 8 Mile" by Roy Grundmann (2003)
North (1994)
North by Northwest (1959)
North & South by Elizabeth Bishop (1946)
"Impaling Implements," July 19, 2022 (#200)
original title
Absolute Friends by John Le Carré (2003)
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (2017)
Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era by Saul Austerlitz (2019)
"'Sell' Sexual Signifiers," July 18, 2022 (#199)
title from "The Epiphany of Female Flesh: A Phenomenological Hermeneutic of Popular Fashion" by Richard J. Alapack (2009)
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (2018)
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro (1990)
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)
"Even Real Scented Rushes," July 17, 2022 (#198)
title from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1872)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)
Fobbit by David Abrams (2012)
"In Fine Feather," July 16, 2022 (#197)
title from Sister Carrie (1900)
Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli (2013)
Walk Like A Man: Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen by Robert J. Wiersema (2011)
Walks with Men by Ann Beattie (2010)
"Frankly Ludicrous," July 15, 2022 (#196)
title from "How 'Elvis' Plays the King" by Anthony Lane (June 24, 2022)
The Point: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio (1978)
The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)
The Keep by Jennifer Egan (2006)
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (2003)
penultimate line from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869)
"Were These Creatures Fools?" July 14, 2022 (#195)
title from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895)
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981)
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (1968)
penultimate line from "Souls on Ice" by Mark Doty (2000)
last line from "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died" by Tom Wolfe (1996)
"A Pharmacological Intuit," July 13, 2022 (#194)
title from Chelsea Handler: Evolution (2020)
Bee Movie (2007)
The Great Gatsby (2013)
"That Was Unconsciously Dichotomous," July 12, 2022 (#193)
title from Elvis by Albert Goldman (1981)
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)
"Reasoning As We Would Recognize It," July 11, 2022 (#192)
title from "Why Do We Obey Rules?" by Rivka Galchen (July 6, 2022)
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (2005)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)
Cane by Jean Toomer (1923)
"Vituperative, If Lucrative," July 10, 2022 (#191)
title from "Rappers and Ranters: Scapegoating and Shadow in the Film '8 Mile' and in Seventeenth Century Heresy" by John Ensign (2005)
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)
Memorial by Bryan Washington (2020)
"The Hellscape of Capitalism," July 9, 2022 (#190)
title from "Bryan Washington on Why He Loves Houston" (July 4, 2022)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)
Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle (2006)
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross (2021)
"The Erection of New Structures," July 8, 2022 (#189)
title from Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)
The Strong-Willed Child: Birth Through Adolescence by Dr. James Dobson (1992)
The Beast in Me and Other Animals: A Collection of Pieces and Drawings About Human Beings and Less Alarming Creatures by James Thurber (1948)
"Lounging Inside a Vowel," July 7, 2022 (#188)
title from "How 'Elvis' Plays the King" by Anthony Lane (June 24, 2022)
Home Fire: A Novel by Kamila Shamsie (2017)
Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories by Amy Hempel (1997)
Tumbledown: A Novel by Robert Boswell (2013)
"Chilled and Stilled Protoplasm," July 6, 2022 (#187)
title from introduction to 1999 edition of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
I Got Somebody in Staunton: Stories by William Henry Lewis (2006)
Mrs. Somebody's Somebody by Tracy Winn (2009)
one line from "Somebody to Love" by Queen (1976)
one line from "Somebody to Love" by Jefferson Airplane (1967)
one line from "Somebody that I Used to Know" by Gotye (2012)
"Generating Inspired Collisions," July 5, 2022 (#186)
title from The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul (2021)
The Anthologist: A Novel by Nicholson Baker (2009)
The Egyptologist: A Novel by Arthur Phillips (2004)
"Out of their Minds," July 4, 2022 (#185)
title from Elvis Presley: The Searcher (2018)
Independence Day (1996)
Independence Day by Richard Ford (1995)
"The Imagination of All Evil," July 3, 2022 (#184)
title from "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (1898)
Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin (2006)
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (1959)
Mad Men 1.6, "Babylon" (August 23, 2007)
last line from "Babylon" by Don McLean (1971)
"In the Shape of a Killer," July 2, 2022 (#183)
title from Jaws (1975)
The White Album by Joan Didion (1979)
White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)
"A Futile and Impotent Criticism," July 1, 2022 (#182)
title from Danse Macabre by Stephen King (1981)
Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn by Evan S. Connell (1984)
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire (2005)
The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson (2014)
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante (2006)
"Not by Grace or Rage," June 30, 2022 (#181)
title from Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (2001)
"The Black Phone" by Joe Hill (2005)
"Mr. Harrigan's Phone" by Stephen King (2020)
Telephone by Percival Everett (2020)
The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant (2017)
last line from "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan (2012)
"A Numbing Lassitude Creeping," June 29, 2022 (#180)
title from "You Will Hear the Locust Sing" by Joe Hill (2005)
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (1893)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
Eraserhead by David Lynch (1977)
"But Only for Life," June 28, 2022 (#179)
title from Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan (1932)
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories by William Gass (1968)
The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison (1982)
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero (2016)
"A Dark and Metamorphic Discourse," June 27, 2022 (#178)
title from Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America by Kathleen Donegan (2013)
The Dark Half by Stephen King (1989)
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly (2021)
last line from Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer (2016)
"The Hybridity Backfires," June 26, 2022 (#177)
original title
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (1998)
Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell (2019)
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012)
The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015)
The Blue Star by Tony Earley (2008)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003)
"Spiral of Diminishing Returns," June 25, 2022 (#176)
title from Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television by Simon Brown (2018)
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence (1915)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
Gravity (2013)
last line from Carry On: The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow by Rainbow Rowell (2015)
"Tortured Bourgeois Ascendance," June 24, 2022 (#175)
title from "'The Staircase' Deconstructs the True-Crime Drama" by Doreen St. Felix (June 9, 2022)
The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey (2017)
The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret (2006)
The Good Girl (2002)
Bad Boys (1995)
Good Girls 1.1, "Pilot" (February 26, 2018)
The Bad Guys (2022)
Bad Girls by Donna Summer (1979)
"Navigating the Nowscape," June 23, 2022 (#174)
title from "Survival of the Sweetest: Little Miss Bosox and the Saving Grace of Baseball in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Abigail L. Bowers and Lowell Mick White (2014)
Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country by Steve Almond (2018)
Bad Haircut: Stories from the Seventies by Tom Perrotta (1994)
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxanne Gay (2014)
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (2018)
last line from "Bad Girls" by M.I.A (2013)
"A Great Black Box," June 22, 2022 (#173)
title from "The New Poem-Making Machinery" by Simon Rich (June 21, 2022)
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (2019)
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (2022)
"Of an Entomological Analog," June 21, 2022 (#172)
title from Poetics of the Hive: The Insect Metaphor in Literature by Christopher Hollingsworth (2005)
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (1981)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King (1984)
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (2011)
"A Fairly Labored Metaphor," June 20, 2022 (#171)
title from The Big Bang Theory 3.8, "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency" (2009)
"The Curse" by Andre Dubus (1988)
"The Curses: Part I" by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2017)
"The Curses: Part II" by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2017)
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan (2007)
"Will Provide More Redundancy," June 19, 2022 (#170)
title from message on AccessUH (June 18, 2022)
"A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus (1983)
Story of My Life by Jay McInerney (1988)
A Free Life by Ha Jin (2007)
"Dead Man Laughing" by Zadie Smith (2008)
Father of the Bride (1991)
Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison (1999)
Three Junes by Julia Glass (2002)
The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin (2004)
Daddy Jake: The Runaway and Other Stories by Joel Chandler Harris (1889)
"Molded Substance with Saw," June 18, 2022 (#169)
title from Menil placard for Octavia (Oktavia) by Meret Oppenheim (1969)
Beginner's Greek: A Novel by James Collins (2008)
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff (2008)
"Its Most Intimate Iterations," June 17, 2022 (#168)
title from "Mapping Black Movement, Containing Black Laughter: Ralph Ellison's New York Essays" by Cynthia Dobbs (2016)
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford (2005)
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett (2013)
"According to a Double Dynamic," June 16, 2022 (#167)
title from "From Uncle Remus to Song of the South: Adapting American Plantation Fictions" by Daniel Stein (2015)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer (2016)
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (1999)
"A Blue, Melting Female Form," June 15, 2022 (#166)
title from "Commentary: The artist in CSULB’s new exhibit is a major donor. That’s bad, and so is the art" by Christopher Knight (June 13, 2022)
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud (2017)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2013)
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad (2016)
"Linguistic Hospitality," June 14, 2022 (#165)
title from The Lost Daughter (2021)
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (2018)
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell (2006)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins (1976)
Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong (2019)
"The Emotional Wherewithal," June 13, 2022 (#164)
title from mother
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (2008)
Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood by Hollis Gillespie (2001)
"Preternaturally Perfect," June 12, 2022 (#163)
original title
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (1975)
Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington (2019)
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1965)
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (1948)
"This Smothering Shrug," June 11, 2022 (#162)
title from Stephen King's Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Booksellers Association presentation speech by Clive Barker (2007)
Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King (2008)
Evening by Susan Minot (2007)
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (2005)
Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg (2006)
"Unique in My Time," June 10, 2022 (#161)
title from Old School by Tobias Wolff (2003)
The Oldest Living Confederate Tells All by Allan Gurganus (1989)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
Old Filth by Jane Gardham (2004)
Old (2021)
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson (1956)
"A Disgusting Masterpiece," June 9, 2022 (#160)
title from “'Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo' Cemented ‘South Park’s Status As A Disgusting Masterpiece" by Kayla Cobb (2017)
Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett (1996)
Watership Down by Richard Adams (1972)
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner (1942)
"The Allegorized Realities," June 8, 2022 (#159)
title from "From Uncle Remus to Song of the South: Adapting American Plantation Fictions" by Daniel Stein (2015)
Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)
Second Place by Rachel Cusk (2021)
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (1974)
First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories by Harold Brodkey (1958)
"A Sensory Participant," June 7, 2022 (#158)
title from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000)
Humanizing Online Writing and Learning by Whitney Kilgore (2016)
Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow (1973)
Elbow Room by James McPherson (1977)
"Are You Gonna Eat That?" June 6, 2022 (#157)
title from Things That Pass for Love: Stories by Alison Amend (2008)
Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale (2009)
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989)
Better than Chocolate (1999)
last line from Cherry: A Memoir by Mary Karr (2000)
"Alien and Antithetical," June 5, 2022 (#156)
title from Poetics of the Hive: The Insect Metaphor in Literature by Christopher Hollingsworth (2005)
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
Big Bad Love: Stories by Larry Brown (1990)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1984)
Love and Obstacles: Stories by Aleksandar Hemon (2009)
"Being and Becoming," June 4, 2022 (#155)
title from "California Dreaming -- Huxley in Hollywood by David King Dunaway" by Guin A. Nance (1991)
Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler (2001)
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos (1925)
Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians by by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons (2006)
"The Wraparound and the Scootabout," June 3, 2022 (#154)
original title
Money by Martin Amis (1984)
Monkeys by Susan Minot (1986)
Mister Monkey by Francine Prose (2016)
"Severe, Metastasizing Consequences," June 2, 2022 (#153)
title from "Another Risk in Overturning Roe" by Jia Tolentino (February 20, 2022)
The Brothers Torres by Coert Voorhees (2008)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)
Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (2007)
My Brother's Place by Pat Lawler (1978)
"Somewhat Anthropomorphized," June 1, 2022 (#152)
title from The Big Bang Theory 2.13, "The Friendship Algorithm" (January 19, 2019)
Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta (2013)
When the Nines Roll Over: And Other Stories by David Benioff (2004)
Half an Inch of Water: Stories by Percival Everett (2015)
"Sung in the Stillness of the Stone," May 31, 2022 (#151)
title from Pilgermann by Russell Hoban (1983)
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)
Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid (1985)
"Pattern-Making Ended," May 30, 2022 (#150)
title from "Brené Brown's Empire of Emotion" by Sarah Larson (November 1, 2021)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1837)
"Backlit By Flames," May 29, 2022 (#149)
title from "Stephen King's Carrie: Victim No More?" by Sarah E. Turner (2021)
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (1961)
Mary and O'Neil by Justin Cronin (2001)
last line from "The Top Gun Volleyball Scene Is Not Homoerotic. It Is Homosexual." by Dave Holmes (May 27, 2022)
"These Critical Capabilities," May 28, 2022 (#148)
title from "The Breakdown of Shared Understanding" in The Catalyst (April 14, 2022)
Sweet Land of Bigamy by Miah Arnold (2012)
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique (2014)
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris (2021)
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989)
one line from Sweetwater by Roxana Robinson (2003)
"The Consuming Repellence of Feeling," May 27, 2022 (#147)
title from "Queer Optimism" by Michael Snediker (2006)
"Lyndon" by David Foster Wallace (1989)
"Lyndon" by Amber Dermont (2005)
last line from LBJ (2016)
"Congeal Into Norms, Forms," May 26, 2022 (#146)
title from Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant (2011)
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq by Joshua Key (2007)
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1392)
Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession by Tyler Stoddard Smith (2012)
"Makes Me Sick," May 25, 2022 (#145)
title from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (1955)
Wyoming by JP Gritton (2019)
Florida by Lauren Groff (2018)
Texas by James Michener (1985)
"Solitary, Alienated, and Malcontent," May 24, 2022 (#144)
title from Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison (1992)
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (1987)
Plays Well With Others by Alan Gurganus (1997)
The Ensemble by Aja Gabel (2018)
"Scribblers Like Me," May 23, 2022 (#143)
title from The Kingcast Ep. 109, "A Conversation with Stephen King," March 2, 2022
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (2016)
Do Not Deny Me: Stories by Jean Thompson (2009)
It Will Come To Me by Emily Fox Gordon (2009)
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy (2016)
The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia by David Stuart MacLean (2009)
"Eyes in the Device," May 22, 2022 (#142)
title from Hollywood's Stephen King by Tony Magistrale (2003)
When I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss by Jessica Wilbanks (2018)
I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by Matthew Salesses (2012)
penultimate line from Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney (2007)
last line from Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison (2002)
"Clenching and Unclenching," May 21, 2022 (#141)
title from God Bless America by Steve Almond (2011)
Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor (2010)
Everybody's Irish by Ian Stansel (2013)
Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center (2009)
"Thinks For No Appreciable Reason," May 20, 2022 (#140)
title from Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (2001)
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (2020)
Breathless by Dean Koontz (2009)
penultimate line from Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer (2007)
"All the Endless Bends," May 19, 2022 (#139)
title from Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (2001)
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (2013)
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (1987)
last line from "All Along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan (1967)
"They Remains Opaque," May 18, 2022 (#138)
original title
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (2009)
Vice (2018)
Small Vices by Robert B. Parker (1997)
"Angrily Eat a Potato," May 17, 2022 (#137)
title from Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses (2021)
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (2001)
Firestarter by Stephen King (1980)
"The Same Word at Times," May 16, 2022 (#136)
title from "Geographic context and ethnic context: Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker" by Ellen Johnson (2007)
The Keep by Jennifer Egan (2006)
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (2003)
Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson (1980)
"On Some Propitiatory Comment," May 15, 2022 (#135)
title from Second Place by Rachel Cusk (2021)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo (1973)
Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 and 1965 Tours that Changed the World by Larry Kane (2003)
"Often Invasive, Arousing the Ire," May 14, 2022 (#134)
title from "Ron Galella's Relentless Gaze" by Naomi Fry (May 11, 2022)
Parasites Like Us by Adam Johnson (2003)
Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson (1991)
last line from Mister Monkey by Francine Prose (2016)
"A Scrim of Discretion," May 13, 2022 (#133)
title from "The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas," You Must Remember This #133, "The Seduced" episode 2
The Art of Philosophy by Peter Sloterdijk (2007)
The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh (2007)
last line from Authority by Jeff VanDerMeer (2014)
"A Tissue of Citations," May 12, 2022 (#132)
title from "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes (1967)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009)
Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
last line from Ozark 4.2 "Let the Great World Spin" (2022)
"Instantaneously Embracing Deception," May 11, 2022 (#131)
original title
Little Bee by Chris Cleave (2008)
The Seventh Plague by James Rollins (2016)
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
last line from The Yogi's Roadmap by Bhāvani Maki (2013)
"This Spotlight All the Way Back," May 10, 2022 (#130)
title from The Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol (1989)
Something Happened by Joseph Heller (1974)
Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle of Fact and Fiction by Jake Silverstein (2010)
last line from Something Beautiful Happened: A Story of Courage and Survival in the Face of Evil by Yvette Manessis (2017)
"In Crisis Rather Than In Accretion," May 9, 2022 (#129)
title from Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America by Kathleen Donegan (2013)
Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events: Stories by Kevin Moffett (2011)
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo (2008)
An Exact Replica of A Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken (2008)
"Or a Revivifying Whiff," May 8, 2022 (#128)
title from Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (1999)
Matrix by Lauren Groff (2021)
The Matrix (1999)
"An Apotheosis of Sorts," May 7, 2022 (#127)
original title
A Free Life by Ha Jin (2007)
Half A Life by Darin Strauss (2010)
last line from "The Making of a Femicide" by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (May 2, 2022)
"Let Out A Sound of Joy," May 6, 2022 (#126)
title from PVA student story (2022)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
The Bridegroom by Ha Jin (2000)
"Simultaneously Subverting," May 5, 2022 (#125)
title from "Slavery’s Bestiary: Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus Tales" by Christopher Peterson (2011)
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Sprecht (2015)
Animal Crackers by Hannah Tinti (2004)
The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)
"With Little Balls and Tassles Hanging Down," May 4, 2022 (#124)
title from The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King (2002)
Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams (1982)
The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do by Eduardo Porter (2011)
"And, Consequently, Flattening," May 3, 2022 (#123)
title from "Demystification of Stephen King's Fiction in the Context of Postmodernism" by Maroš Buday (2016)
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (2007)
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway (2008)
last line from Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (1975)
"The Perpetual Inadequacy of Accumulation," May 2, 2022 (#122)
title from "Alice Walker's Journals Depict an Artist Restless on Her Laurels" by Lauren Michele Jackson (April 18, 2022)
Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (1935)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)
"With Recourse to Rhetorical Contortions," May 1, 2022 (#121)
original title
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (1952)
"Kill the Rabbits" by Tiphanie Yanique (2010)
"Sir Rabbit" by Eudora Welty (1949)
"Outside the Universe of Discourse," April 30, 2022 (#120)
title from Impeachment: American Crime Story 3.8 "Stand By Your Man" (2021)
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1931)
The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (1968)
last line from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)
"Encomiums Create an Aura," April 29, 2022 (#119)
title from Spike Lee by Todd McGowan (2014)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013)
The Secret Goldfish by David Means (2004)
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (1986)
"Unmasking the Very Process of Masking," April 28, 2022 (#118)
title from "A Historical Transposition: Toni Morrison's Tar Baby and Frantz Fanon's Post Enlightenment Phantasms" by Julia V. Emberley (1999)
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (1998)
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (1981)
Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James (2019)
Red Moon by Benjamin Percy (2013)
"Something That Came Mostly From Beneath," April 27, 2022 (#117)
title from There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman (2010)
Orange World: Stories by Karen Russell (2019)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
"An Impressionable Little Thing," April 26, 2022 (#116)
title from "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
Between Here and the Yellow Sea by Nic Pizzolatto (2006)
Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches by Roberto Bolaño (1998-2003)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
"Tall According To His Biography," April 25, 2022 (#115)
title from Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005)
The Green Book (2018)
The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015)
The Green Mile by Stephen King (1996)
one line from Lick the Sugar Habit by Nancy Appleton (1985)
one line from Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker (1987)
"Before the Metered Firewall," April 24, 2022 (#114)
title from Danel Olson's ENGL 1301 syllabus
Blue Hawaii (1961)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
last line from "The Curses" by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2017)
"The Glide and Flick of the Golden Scales," April 23, 2022 (#113)
title from Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison (1992)
Purple Rain (1984)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
"A Matter of Mutual Industrial Innovation," April 22, 2022 (#112)
title from by Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South by Jason Sperb (2012)
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite by M.C. Escher (1989)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin (1969)
Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
last line from Night Shift by Stephen King (1978)
"A Mastermind of Comestible Adventure," April 21, 2022 (#111)
title from PVA student story (2022)
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin (2015)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay (2017)
"An Amazing Blazer," April 20, 2022 (#110)
title from sister-in-law
Budding Prospects by T.C. Boyle (1984)
Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith (2009)
The Complete Book of Herbs: A Practical Guide to Growing and Using Herbs by Lesley Bremness (1988)
"A Rarity In Our Fair City," April 19, 2022 (#109)
title from "George H. W. Bush Monument in Sesquicentennial Park, Houston" by Peggy Woods (2022)
In Another Time by Caroline Leech (2018)
Closing Time by Joseph Heller (1994)
Swing Time by Zadie Smith (2016)
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (1924)
Feminism In Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present ed. by Miriam Schneir (1994)
"Shown To Be Co-Constitutive," April 18, 2022 (#108)
title from "Danyel Smith Tells the History of Black Women in Pop" by Emily Lordi (April 17, 2022)
Believers by Charles Baxter (1997)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
The Great Santini by Pat Conroy (1976)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
"With All Your Sweet Talk," April 17, 2022 (#107)
title from "Heroin" by Velvet Underground (1967)
The Son by Philipp Meyer (2013)
Jesus: A Biography from a Believer by Paul Johnson (2010)
Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson (1992)
I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé by Michael Arceneaux (2018)
"Of a Very Limited Type," April 16, 2022 (#106)
title from The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
Generation Kill by Evan Wright (2004)
Generation Friends by Saul Austerlitz (2019)
"How We Look," April 15, 2022 (#105)
title from Carrie (1976)
The Things They've Done: A book about the careers of selected graduates of the Rice University School of Architecture by William Cannady (2008)
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990)
"Snacks for the Class Snack Basket," April 14, 2022 (#104)
title from South ParQ Vaccination Special (2021)
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken (1996)
Red Ant House by Ann Cummins (2001)
Giant (1956)
"A Vestigial Morsel," April 13, 2022 (#103)
original title
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (2010)
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (2008)
The Lady From the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara (2019)
"Insufficient and Detrimental," April 12, 2022 (#102)
title from "Houston’s public transit is insufficient and detrimental" by Michael King (April 12, 2022)
Crooked Hearts by Robert Boswell (1991)
Black Hearts by Jim Frederick (2010)
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (1999)
Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni (1999)
"Bizarre, Tragic, and Poetic," April 11, 2022 (#101)
title from "‘A beautiful story of sisterhood’: Friends, family remember 97-year-old twins who died together in the cold" by Derek Hawkins (March 7, 2017)
The Chanel Sisters by Judithe Little (2020)
Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager (2019)
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)
Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni (1999)
"To Live Life Well," April 10, 2022 (#100)
title from Celebration-of-Life program for Sara Elizabeth Bryant (2022)
Where the Bird Sings Best by Alejandro Jodorowsky (1992)
Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut (1979)
"The Staid, Crunchy Workhorse," April 9, 2022 (#99)
title from "Is Celery Juice a Sham?" by Dawn MacKeen (October 16, 2019)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994)
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity by Mark Vonnegut (1975)
Descent of Man: Stories by T.C. Boyle (1979)
last line from Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut (2005)
"The Psychological Impact of Whites," April 8, 2022 (#98)
title from UH student essay (2022)
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (2019)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino (2019)
last line from "Teaching Cross-Racial Texts: Cultural Theft in 'The Secret Life of Bees'" by Laurie Grobman (2008)
"Shi(r)ts in Sherbe(r)t Shades," April 7, 2022 (#97)
original title
Dancing After Hours: Stories by Andre Dubus (1996)
After the Plague: Stories by T.C. Boyle (2001)
Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King (2008)
Aftermath: Stories by Scott Nadelson (2011)
last line from Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future by Robert Reich (2010)
"To Sterilize the Microbes of Emotion," April 6, 2022 (#96)
title from introduction to George Orwell's Animal Farm by C.M. Woodhouse (1954)
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman (2011)
The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York by Mat Johnson (2007)
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí by Salvador Dalí (1942)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2001)
last line from Dream Stuff: Stories by David Malouf (2000)
"A Barrage of Scatological Degradation," April 5, 2022 (#95)
title from "History and Desire: A Short Introduction to the Art of Cy Twombly" by Michael Schreyach (2017)
first line from Dopesick 1.8, "The People vs. Purdue Pharma" (2021)
Dangerous Laughter by Stephen Millhauser (2008)
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle (1993)
Candyman (1992)
Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond (2004)
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)
Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty by Harris Wittels (2012)
penultimate line from "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground (1997)
"Forced Perspective," April 4, 2022 (#94)
title from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Wikipedia page
Books of Blood vol. 5 by Clive Barker (1985)
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanDerMeer (2013)
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (2011)
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay (2014)
last line from Landscape of Fear: Stephen King's American Gothic by Tony Magistrale (1988)
"In Frightening, Incoherent Cycles," April 3, 2022 (#93)
title from Carrie by Stephen King (1974)
Nobody's Girl by Antonya Nelson (1998)
Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace (1988)
Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret (2006)
last line from "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid (1978)
"By Its Pointless Circularity," April 2, 2022 (#92)
title from Christine by Stephen King (1983)
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon (1995)
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (2014)
Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card (1989)
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (2005)
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown (2013)
last line from "Boys" by Rick Moody (2000)
"A Feature of the Creature Feature," April 1, 2022 (#91)
original title
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (2002)
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (5th Century BCE)
"Art in a Time of War" by Peter Schjeldahl (March 14, 2022)
"Who is the Bad Art Friend?" by Robert Kolker (October 5, 2021)
penultimate line from "Sutured Time: History and Kubrick’s The Shining" by Tony Magistrale (2016)
"Every Ruler's Game," March 31, 2022 (#90)
title from PVA student story (2022)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (1994)
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (2006)
last line from The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White (1970)
"In Devastating Fashion," March 30, 2022 (#89)
title from American Crime Story: Impeachment 3.3, "Not to Be Believed" (2021)
The Lover by Marguerite Duras (1984)
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (1995)
The Cage Keeper by Andre Dubus III (1989)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
"An Anecdote to Dine Out On," March 29, 2022 (#88)
title from Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
The Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol (1989)
The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank by Anne Frank (1947)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)
The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll (1987)
The Princess Diaries (2001)
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
"About Taking Care of Babies," March 28, 2022 (#87)
title from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 3.24, "Six Degrees of Graduation" (1993)
The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1941)
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry (1971)
The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy (1966)
The Last Action Hero (1993)
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (1961)
The Last Pirate: A Father, HIs Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana by Tony Dokoupil (2014)
The Last Dance Episode 1 (2020)
"Make a Meal of the Sexual Innuendo," March 27, 2022 (#86)
title from episode 40 of The Kingcast, "Christine with Bryan Fuller" (2020)
The Power of the Dog (2021)
The Dog of the Marriage: Stories by Amy Hempel (2005)
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace (1987)
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White (1970)
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett (2013)
Storm of the Century by Stephen King (1999)
"A Complete History of Nothing," March 26, 2022 (#85)
title from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (1999)
How to Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
"How to Become A Writer" by Lorrie Moore (1985)
"How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)" by Junot Díaz (1996)
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer (2003)
How to Escape From A Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique (2010)
"How to Tell Stories to Children" by Miranda July (2007)
How To Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (2010)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (2003)
"Purports to Subvert, Perverts to Subject," March 25, 2022 (#84)
original title
Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond (2010)
How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields (2013)
My Life In Heavy Metal by Steve Almond (2002)
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (1993)
Writing to Save A Life by John Edgar Wideman (2016)
"The Color of Your Eyes," March 24, 2022 (#83)
title from Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb (2008)
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (1998)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972)
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (1897)
"Engaging with Escaping," March 23, 2022 (#82)
original title
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by Nick Flynn (2004)
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones (1992)
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (1984)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (2020)
Detroit Rock City (1999)
penultimate line from Maps of the Imagination: The Writer As Cartographer by Peter Turchi (2004)
"Your Mom Will Say:," March 22, 2022 (#81)
title from Self-Help by Lorrie Moore (1985)
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross (2021)
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (2012)
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD (2019)
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (2020)
Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less, and Achieve More by Scott Sonensheim (2017)
one line from PVA student story (2022)
"Its White Walls Were Streaked," March 21, 2022 (#80)
title from The New Yorker's "The Uncanny Impact of Charles Ray's Sculptures" by Peter Schjeldahl (February 2022)
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
Empire of Things: How We Became A World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Frank Trentmann (2016)
Empire Records (1995)
Boardwalk Empire 1.1, " Boardwalk Empire" (2010)
Empire Falls 1.1, "Episode 1" (2005)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Empire 1.1, "Pilot" (2015)
"A Failure of Imagination," March 20, 2022 (#79)
title from Hollywood's Stephen King by Tony Magistrale (2003)
The Trap by Tabitha King (1985)
Elvis Presley: Caught In a Trap by Spencer Leigh (2017)
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (2008)
Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America's First Great Popular Songs ed. by Ken Emerson (2010)
"How They Get Shitty Anyway," March 19, 2022 (#78)
title from Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (1996)
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1994)
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser (2001)
Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self by Peter D. Kramer (1993)
The Oldest Living Confederate Tells All by Allan Gurganus (1989)
Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party by Dinesh D'Souza (2018)
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012)
last line from "'Birth of A Nation': Propaganda as History" by John Hope Franklin (1979)
"Moderately Thunderstruck," March 18, 2022 (#77)
title from "Apt Pupil" in Different Seasons by Stephen King (1982)
Assorted Fire Events: Stories by David Means (2000)
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (2009)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (2007)
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell Moore (2018)
"An Arrogant Fluorescent Orange," March 17, 2022 (#76)
title from Christine by Stephen King (1983)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
Eve's Apple by Jonathan Rosen (1997)
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty (2021)
last line from "Orange World" by Karen Russell (2018)
"An Aesthetic Assessment," March 16, 2022 (#75)
original title
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin (1871)
Falling Man by Don DeLillo (2007)
A Good Fall by Ha Jin (2009)
Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2001)
"I Love A Man in Uniform" by Gang of Four (1982)
"Making Unapologetic Nods," March 15, 2022 (#74)
title from "Trenton Doyle Hancock Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass" (2019)
first line from Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger (2019)
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth (1968)
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy (1983)
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino (1965)
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore (1985)
last line from The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood (2004)
"The Plane-Filling Motifs," March 14, 2022 (#73)
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut (1999)
God Bless America: Stories by Steve Almond (2011)
Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz (2004)
last line from Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite by M.C. Escher (1989)
"To Make These Moves," March 13, 2022 (#72)
title from "Led Zeppelin Gets Into Your Soul" by James Wood (January 24, 2022)
God Is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr. (2007)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
My Date With Satan: Stories by Stacey Richter (1999)
last line from "The Biographer's Hat" by Cynthia Ozick (March 7, 2022)
"A Failure of Communal Spirit," March 12, 2021 (#71)
title from Dead Languages by David Shields (1989)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (1842)
Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Robert Draper (2007)
Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanDerMeer (2019)
The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz (2019)
The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead by Chanelle Benz (2017)
"The Spilled Milk of Dreams," March 11, 2022 (#70)
title from Christine by Stephen King (1983)
first line from "Friday Afternoon" by 311 (2014)
Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway (1932)
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (1949)
last line from "Afternoon Delight" by Starlight Vocal Band (1976)
"The Whispers of the Universe," March 10, 2022 (#69)
title from a teabag tag (2022)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)
Truth is a Lonely Warrior: Unmasking the Forces Behind Global Destruction by James Perloff (2013)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (1933)
How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen (2002)
"End This Conversation," March 9, 2022 (#68)
title from The Kingcast Ep. 109, "A Conversation with Stephen King," March 2, 2022
The End by Salvatore Scibona (2008)
The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c. 1880-1900 by Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst (2000)
End Zone by Don DeLillo (1972)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (2007)
The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen (2018)
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011)
"With Savage Little Jabs," March 8, 2022 (#67)
title from Christine by Stephen King (1983)
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (2022)
The Book of Job (translated by Stephen Mitchell) (2009)
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie (2018)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)
one line from The Films of Stephen King: From Carrie to Secret Window ed. by Tony Magistrale (2008)
"An Obvious Ambivalence," March 7, 2022 (#66)
title from "Stephen King's Carrie: Victim No More?" by Sarah E. Turner in Violence in the Films of Stephen King ed. by Tony Magistrale and Michael J. Blouin (2021)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924)
At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft (1936)
last line from The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)
"Your Almost Militant Commitment," March 6, 2022 (#65)
title from Schitt's Creek 6.1 "Smoke Signals" (2020)
A Stranger In This World: Stories by Kevin Canty (1994)
You Are Not a Stranger Here: Stories by Adam Haslett (2002)
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July (2007)
More of This World or Maybe Another: Stories by Barb Johnson (2009)
"To Be Performed Relentlessly," March 5, 2022 (#64)
title from Fool for Love by Sam Shepard (1983)
Don't I Know You? by Karen Shepard (2006)
I Am No One You Know: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (2004)
Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories by Jim Shepard (2007)
two lines from The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood (2004)
"Remaining an Integral Cog," March 4, 2022 (#63)
title from UH student paper (2022)
How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti (2010)
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (2009)
Person of Interest by Susan Choi (2008)
two lines from "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor (1955)
two lines from Planet of the Apes (1968)
"Soothe My Fevered Brow," March 3, 2022 (#62)
title from Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom (2016)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami (2007)
The Running Man by Stephen King as Richard Bachman (1982)
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs (2002)
Running Dog by Don DeLillo (1978)
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (2019)
"Excrescence of the New World," March 2, 2022 (#61)
title from UH student paper (2022)
first line from PVA student story (2022)
Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber (2004)
The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven by Rick Moody (1995)
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman (2009)
"Mars Is Heaven" by Ray Bradbury (1948)
"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin (1971)
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan (1973)
"Heaven Is Closed" by Willie Nelson (2018)
"Cheek to Cheek" by Fred Astaire (1935)
"Leaves in a Breeze," March 1, 2022 (#60)
title from Bag of Bones by Stephen King (1998)
first line from Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (2013)
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison (2015)
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy (1973)
The Godfather by Mario Puzo (1969)
three lines from Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (2018)
"Assuming the Chairmanship," February 28, 2022 (#59)
title from For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast (2013)
"A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver (1983)
God on the Rocks by Jane Gardham (1978)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
Jurassic Park (1993)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (2001)
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson (2007)
Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom (2009)
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume (1970)
"Take Some Stupid Art Class," February 27, 2022 (#58)
title from Ghost World (2001)
"Ghost-Birds" by Nic Pizzolatto (2003)
The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories by Kevin Brockmeier (2021)
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman (2009)
"Ghosts and Empties" by Laure Groff (2015)
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton (1973)
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories by Roald Dahl (1983)
one line from "Ghost Ship" by Blur (2015)
"A Wrong Turn in the Catacombs," February 26, 2022 (#57)
title from I'll Be Gone in the Dark 1.3 (2020)
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk MD (2014)
Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes by Anne Elizabeth Moore (2017)
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado (2017)
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012)
Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks (2003)
"The Body" by Stephen King (1982)
one line from Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)
"Equal Parts Holiness and Hangover," February 25, 2022 (#56)
title from Bag of Bones by Stephen King (1998)
Angels in the Outfield (1994)
Angels and Demons (2009)
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (2011)
The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven by Rick Moody (1995)
The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks by Russell Banks (2000)
Angels in America by Tony Kushner (1991)
Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block (2009)
one line from The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (2014)
"Occupational Hazard," February 24, 2022 (#55)
title from Bag of Bones by Stephen King (1998)
Hellraiser (1987)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)
The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier (2008)
two lines from "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo" by David Benioff (2004)
"Laminated in Plastic," February 23, 2022 (#54)
title from The Dead Zone by Stephen King (1979)
Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason (2001)
The Bhagavad Gita trans. by Eknath Easwaran (2009)
Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst (2008)
three lines from The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988)
"You Know The Babysitter's Dead," February 22, 2022 (#53)
title from Drop Dead Gorgeous (1998)
"Children of the Corn" by Stephen King (1977)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (1942; orig. 1924)
Little Children by Tom Perrotta (2004)
Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (2013)
one line from Little Raw Souls by Steven Schwartz (2013)
last line from Little Monsters (1989)
"Extremely Obvious Emblems," February 21, 2022 (#52)
title from Dead Languages by David Shields (1989)
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)
The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig (2006)
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr (1995)
two lines from The Club by Tagis Würger (2019)
one line from The Baby-Sitter's Club: Claudia and Mean Janine: A Graphic Novel by Ann M. Martin and Raina Telgemeier (2008)
"The Gauze of This Life," February 20, 2022 (#51)
title from Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey (2015)
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman (2000)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)
"The Dead," by James Joyce (1914)
one line from The Quick and the Dead (1995)
one line from Ill Will by Dan Chaon (2017)
"Get My Project On Wheels," February 19, 2022 (#50)
title from The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter (2007)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (2008)
The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin (1994)
"Designed to Enlighten Me," February 18, 2022 (#49)
title from "Watching the Wheels" by John Lennon & Yoko Ono (1980)
The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay (2019)
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (2009)
The Pillow Book of Lady Kasa by Barrie Sherwood (2000)
three lines from The Book of Ten by Susan Wood (2011)
"Many Important People," February 17, 2022 (#48)
title from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933)
The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick (1956)
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)
The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell (2008)
three lines from Free State of Jones (2016)
"Institutional Inertia," February 16, 2022 (#47)
title from Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (1994)
The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow (2010)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Malcolm X to Alex Haley (1965)
two lines from The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford (1998)
"Surging with Girls," February 15, 2022 (#46)
title from A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (2003)
Cherry: A Memoir by Mary Karr (2000)
Lust & Other Stories by Susan Minot (1989)
one line from "The American Way of Death" by Jessica Mitford (1963)
"As It Is Becoming," February 14, 2022 (#45)
title from Friends 5.13, "The One With Joey's Bag" (February 4, 1999)
Loving Day by Mat Johnson (2015)
Training Day (2001)
Broad City 4.2, "Twaining Day" (September 20, 2017)
"Love My Lashes," February 13, 2022 (#44)
title from makeup bag from grandmother
"Against Interpretation" by Susan Sontag (1964)
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom (2016)
Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond (2014)
three lines from The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1900)
"This Swamp of Unbalanced Formulas," February 12, 2022 (#43)
title from The Big Bang Theory 3.14, "The Einstein Approximation" (2010)
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique (2014)
Drown by Junot Díaz (1996)
two lines from The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont (2012)
two lines from An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim (2018)
"This Swift and Graceless Descent," February 11, 2022 (#42)
title from The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin (1976)
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
two lines from "Everything that Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor (1965)
"Over Time, the Pieces of Eden," February 10, 2022 (#41)
title from "Assassin’s Creed: Peace, Parkour, and… Murder?" by Rey Cooper, February 10, 2022
The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin (1976)
John Crow's Devil by Marlon James (2005)
three lines from The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
"A Good, Long Dream You Had," February 9, 2022 (#40)
title from Emerald City by Jennifer Egan (1993)
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic & Madness and the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larsen (2003)
City of God by E.L. Doctorow (2000)
City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin (2016)
Drop City by T.C. Boyle (2003)
Permutation City by Greg Egan (1994)
Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America by Stephen L. Klineberg (2020)
"Under Her Wing Tips," February 8, 2022 (#39)
title from She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not by Lesléa Newman (2002)
Garbage, Garbage (1995)
Trash by Dorothy Allison (1988)
"That White Guy Defiance Manifest," February 7, 2022 (#38)
title from "A Shining History: Unmasking America's Shadow Self (Part III): A Deep Derwent Dive" by scrola, July 15, 2020
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas (2006)
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb (1992)
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace (1999)
The Women by T.C. Boyle (2009)
penultimate line from "All Ahead of Them" by Tobias Wolff (2013)
final line from The Ensemble by Aja Gabel (2018)
"Collection of Caliginous Junk," February 6, 2022 (#37)
title from The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
Want by Lynn Steger Strong (2020)
Weather by Jenny Offill (2020)
"A Reasonable Future Prognostication," February 5, 2022 (#36)
title from "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders (1992)
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (1999)
White Fang by Jack London (1906)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
"The Tyranny of Perfectionism," February 4, 2022 (#35)
title from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (1995)
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (1980)
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (1984)
two lines from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
two lines from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
two lines from The Nightingales of Troy by Alice Fulton (2008)
two lines from Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (1996)
"No Badly Timed Reflection," February 3, 2022 (#34)
title from Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (1997)
"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders (1992)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
two lines from "Graceland" by Paul Simon (1986)
"As If By Common Accord, Birds," February 2, 2022 (#33)
title from "Escape from Spiderhead" by George Saunders (2010)
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver (2020)
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (1995)
one line from "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier
last line from "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds (1965)
"Do the Pages Daily," February 1, 2022 (#32)
title from The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (1992)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (1996)
one line from "The World of Game of Thrones" by Hank Odell (February 1, 2022)
last line from "The Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka (1922)
"Cheep Cheep," January 31, 2022 (#31)
original title
Veep (2012-2019)
Cheer (2020/2022)
three lines from Fear (1996)
"Considering the Cannonade," January 30, 2022 (#30)
original title
Doghouse Roses: Stories by Steve Earle (2002)
Bark: Stories by Lorrie Moore (2014)
two lines from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
one line from The Power of the Dog (2021)
one line from Anton Chekhov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog" (1899)
one line from CAMO Rescue's Welcome Home Packet (2022)
last line from Moonstruck (1987)
"Composed of Satanists," January 29, 2022 (#29)
title from The New Yorker's "Led Zeppelin Gets Into Your Soul" by James Wood (January 24, 2022)
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (2006)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2015)
one line from investment team's mass email, subject "A Brief History of Market Corrections" (January 26, 2022)
one line from Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman (1985)
last line from American History X (1998)
"A Wily Pipsqueak Shapeshifter," January 28, 2022 (#28)
title from The Soul Thief from Charles Baxter (2007)
Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns by Cheryl L. Reed (2004)
The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet (2016)
one line from Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
one line from B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton (1985)
one line from "'The Power of the Dog' is Jane Campion's Anti-Western," by Anthony Lane (November 17, 2021), quoting Psalm 22:20 from the King James Bible
"Resistant to Identify," January 27, 2022 (#27)
original title
The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter (2007)
Soulstorm: Stories by Clarice Lispector (1989)
one line from Kicking Ass and Saving Souls: A True Story of a Life Over the Line by David Matthews (2011)
one line from The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1611)
"The Impurity of Their Stocklines," January 26, 2022 (#26)
title from Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (1997)
American Woman by Susan Choi (2001)
American Masculine by Shann Ray (2011)
two lines from An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (2018)
one line from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
"The Phone Hotel," January 25, 2022 (#25)
title from supervisor's email
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (2007)
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing (2013)
one line from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)
one line from Ozark 4.1, "The Beginning of the End" (2022)
"Stage Name John Wayne," January 24, 2022 (#24)
original title
41: A Portrait of My Father by George W. Bush (2014)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)
two lines from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
one line from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
"Who Could Prevail Against It," January 23, 2022 (#23)
title from The Maytrees by Annie Dillard (2007)
How To Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (2010)
The Forest for the Trees: An Editors Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner (2010)
one line from Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (2003)
one line from Out of the Woods: Stories by Chris Offutt (1999)
"Shades of Chambray," January 22, 2022 (#22)
original title
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans (2020)
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
one line from Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (2003)
one line from "Two of Us" by The Beatles (1969)
one line from J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary (2008)
"An Ensemble of Equals," January 21, 2022 (#21)
title from The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta (2007)
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (2005)
The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1) by Michel Foucault (1978)
two lines from "The Healer" by Aimee Bender (1998)
"A Common Bond for Disruption," January 20, 2022 (#20)
title from Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)
Eden by Stanislaw Lem (1958)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
one line from Cheer 1.3, "Blood, Sweat and Cheers" (2020)
"Whatever Its Other Contributions," January 19, 2022 (#19)
title from "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" by Adrienne Rich (1980)
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (2010)
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley (2008)
one line from "Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery" by Jeanette Winterson (1995)
"Their Antiphonal Proposal," January 18, 2022 (#18)
title from The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough (1925)
The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
one line from "Across the Universe" by The Beatles (1969)
one line from "Penny Lane" by The Beatles (1967)
last line from Seinfeld 9.19, "The Maid" (1998)
"Kinging Is a Precarious Business," January 17, 2022 (#17)
title from The King's Speech (2010)
Literal Madness: Three Novels by Kathy Acker (1988)
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer (2003)
two lines from Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech (August 28, 1963)
one line from J. Edgar (2011)
"Precise Departure Point," January 16, 2022 (#16)
title from Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka (2021)
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (2021)
one line from Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
"Mystifying for the Reader," January 15, 2022 (#15)
title from the New Yorker's "The Case Against the Trauma Plot" by Parul Sehgal (December 27, 2021)
Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy by Larissa Pham (2021)
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk MD (2014)
two lines from "ARTPOP" by Lady Gaga (2014)
two lines from "Pop Art Blue" by Zero 7 (2009)
"Taste Waste Ahead," January 14, 2022 (#14)
original title
Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant (2013)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
two lines from "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance," chapter 2 of Black Looks: Race and Representation by bell hooks (1992)
one line from Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy by Larissa Pham (2021)
"A Certain Kind of Peace," January 13, 2022 (#13)
title from The Dancing Mind by Toni Morrison (1996)
A Song For You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford (2019)
The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips (2009)
two lines from Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018)
"In Deference to Consumerist Nostrums," January 12, 2022 (#12)
title from Stephen King and American Politics by Michael J. Blouin (2021)
You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian (2019)
What Is Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi (2015)
one line from The New Yorker's "How To Practice" by Ann Patchett (March 1, 2021)
"The World Next Door," January 11, 2022 (#11)
title from The Gunslinger by Stephen King (1982)
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1984)
one line from "Facebook and The Murderer" by Steve Coll (April 18, 2017)
"Such Glorious Specimens," January 10, 2022 (#10)
title from The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan (2011)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (2014)
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
"The Langoliers" from Four Past Midnight by Stephen King (1990)
"A Dizzy Blending of Genres," January 9, 2022 (#9)
title from The Regulators by Stephen King as Richard Bachman (1996)
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (2009)
Eating Naked: Stories by Stephen Dobyns (2000)
one line from The New Yorker's "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s History Lessons" by Jelani Cobb (January 9, 2022)
"About the Hungry Ghosts," January 8, 2022 (#8)
title from interview with Shyam Selvadurai in Epiphany literary magazine (January 7, 2022)
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (2017)
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon (2018)
one line from Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas by Roberto Lovato (2020)
"Bouncing Back and Forth Between," January 7, 2022 (#7)
title from the New Yorker's "'The Matrix Resurrections' is a Crucial Keanu Reeves Movie," December 30, 2021
In the Land of Men by Antonya Nelson (1992)
The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell (2010)
final line of each stanza from Gulf Coast 22.2 (2010), "Double Issue," by Kurt Mueller (on the artwork of Dawolu Jabari Anderson)
"A Very Big Job," January 6, 2022 (#6)
title from epigraph "from Lila" in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)
Home Alone (1990)
Die Hard (1988)
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
"Smoke and Snow," January 5, 2022 (#5)
original title
Don't Cry: Stories by Mary Gaitskill (2009)
Happy Like This by Ashley Wurzbacher (2019)
one line from "How the Artist Mickalene Thomas Lovingly Reconceives the Female Form" by Angela Flournoy, New York Times Magazine 10.17.21
"This is Hell," January 4, 2022 (#4)
title from Desperation by Stephen King (1996)
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017)
Firestarter by Stephen King (1980)
last line from Veep 4.3, "Data" (April 2015)
"The Dangers of Knowing," January 3, 2022 (#3)
title from link on "What The Forest Remembers" by Jennifer Egan (December 27, 2021)
Desperation by Stephen King (1996)
Needful Things by Stephen King (1993)
one line from Pearl by Tabitha King (1988)
"Important in Determining," January 2, 2022 (#2)
title from (tag) line for New Yorker's "Why We Make Resolutions (And Why They Fail)" by Maria Konnikova (December 20, 2013)
"I, Me, Mine" by George Harrison for The Beatles (1970)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-72)
The Secret Self: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Literature by Theodor Reik (1952)
one line from Desperation by Stephen King (1996)
one line from "Give Way, Ye Gates" by Theodore Roethke (1970)
"Flatten Them Into A Set," January 1, 2022 (#1)
title from the New Yorker's "The Case Against the Trauma Plot" by Parul Sehgal (December 27, 2021)
"The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (1898)
"Rectatitf" by Toni Morrison (1983)