by Christine Kenneally, New York TimesIn stark form, the debate was: Does language shape what we perceive, a position associated with the late Benjamin Lee Whorf, or are our perceptions pure sensory impressions, immune to the arbitrary ways that language carves up the world?The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking, But it can trip us up, too.
by Edward Humes, Los Angeles TimesHidden in plain sight just down the street from City Hall and mere steps from the offices of this newspaper, skid row is a reeking repository of disease, drugs and desperation that most of us avoid when possible or hurriedly step past when necessary,a verting our stares from hollow cheeks and hollow eyes, as if they were invisible."The Soloist" is Lopez's compelling and gruffly tender account of what can happen when you don't step past.
by Sarah Lyall, New York TimesAcross Europe, musicians are being asked to wear decibel-measuring devices and to sit behind see-through antinoise screens. COmpanies are altering their repertories. And conductors are rexconsidering the definition of "fortissimo."
by Rupert Smith, Los Angeles TimesWhen it comes to erotica, you can judge a book between the covers.
by Jan Freeman, Boston GlobeThere are only two possible fates for any new usage. Either it will fade away, in which case your fulminations are unnecessary, or it will stick around, meaning they are useless.
by Peter Behrens, Washington PostThis is a book about a man confronting the world and struggling to make sense, through his work, of what he cannot otherwise grasp. Like Frost's poetry, Hall's novel is pungent, deceptively simple and magnificently sad.
by Heather Havrilesky, SalonThis is my new therapy (since I can't afford the old kind): shopping for alarmingly cheap yet nutritious foods. It's relaxing, somehow, to stand there in front of those bags — 33 cents for split peas! Amazing! — fantasizing about how my family will eat only beans from now on: chilis and bean burritos (Homemade tortillas! Just flour and water!) and ban soups, whole meals that cost less than $3 to make, that might feed the family for days on end.
by John Walsh, The IndependentIn a world of weekend tennis parties in Surrey and Berkshire, of agreeablecountry houses with labradors, butlers and sensible atrons dead-heading roses with trug and secateur, Betjeman's poetic alter-ego exists in a chronic fever of sexual excitement.
by Scott Timberg, Los Angeles TimesIs it possible to lead a dedicated literary life in the billionaire-filled, media-crazed New York of today? To be heedless of the material world as you burrow into novels and ideas the way the old Partisan Review gang did in the '40s and '50s, to come up with notions that rock the intellectual landscape? And if so, who exactly is still paying attention?
by Izzy Grinspan, Poetry FoundationThe longest poem in the world will be written by horny robots.
by Janet Maslin, New York TimesThere is something irritating about the very premise of "Girls Like Us," Sheila Weller's three-headed biography of legendary singer-songwriters. But "Girls Like Us" turns out to be unexpectedly captivating. And it defies expectations, to the point where Ms. Weller's grand ambitions wind up fulfilled.
by Keith Bradsher, New York TimesTen thousand miles separate the mill's hushed rows of oversized silos and sheds — beige, gray and now empty — fromt he riotous streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but a widening global crisis unites them.
by Linda Burum, Los Angeles TimesOver the years, Hong Kong coffee shops began serving Chiense food and reflecting British influences. The jolt-inducing, triple-strength, Hong Kong-style milk tea and sandwiches trimmed of their crusts are essential coffee shop fare.
by Caroline Alexander, New YorkerA journey through the mangrove forest of Bengal.
by Jon Marcus, Boston GlobeIce. Wind. Sleet. Rain. Downed power lines. No-show volunteers. The minute-by-minute story of just how close organizers came ot calling off the 2007 Boston Marathon, something never done in the race's 111 years.