My gig at EW isn’t writing book reviews, but I can still state with a fair degree of certainty that Ron McLarty’s ”The Memory of Running” is the best novel you won’t read this year. But you can experience it, and I’m all but positive that you’ll thank me for the tip if you do. […]

I’ve got a confession, okay? I know that some of you will laugh when I tell you this, and some will sneer. I can take it; that’s why they pay me the big bucks ($25 a column, and buddy, that ain’t hay). My confession comes in three parts. (A) I’ve seen all the ”Nightmare on […]

So here’s what happened, best that I can figure. A couple of months back, the editors at Entertainment Weekly asked me to review ”Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and either liked the review itself or liked the fact that it was written in longhand. (For all I know, they might have thought […]