I was delighted to write my debut piece for the AGNI website, edited by the redoubtable Sven Birkerts, whose book The Gutenberg Elegies I read with great pleasure when I was just out of college. George Scialabba, whose new book I review in the piece, is a very fine critic who is getting more attention these days, although not yet as much as he deserves.

A bit more recently, I wrote my first piece for Tablet, the newly revamped version of what used to be called nextbook.org. It's edited by my friend Alana Newhouse, and I shall only say that any magazine that has hired both Seth Lipsky and Victor Navasky as columnists is big-tent in admirable way. My piece, FYI, is about Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, people with whom I have spent not a little time lately...

In the “win” category, there is the new book by former LA Times religion writer William Lobdell, which I review very favorably; in the “lose” category, there is the unfortunate new novel (which I review here) by Glen David Gold, whose first novel was the masterful Carter Beats the Devil.

Hard to say who will send me more angry mail over this piece in today’s Slate—the vegans or the beef lobby.

Surely the only time I will ever share an hour of NPR radio with the legendary founder of The New York Review of Books. Listen here.

With my neighbor, audio wiz Lee Faulkner, I’ve been recording a series of podcasts for NewHavenIndependent.org, a terrific local news website. The ninth in the series is an interview with Arnold Gorlick, who owns the Madison Art Cinemas, a nearby movie house. For decades Arnie managed the legendary York Square cinemas in downtown New Haven, before striking out on his own. I invite you to listen here to this tour inside the mind of a cinephile, entrepreneur, and great eccentric character.