Someone was sitting in my office yesterday … and they forgot to close the door. They also left four Winnie the Pooh books and a note to G. Whoever you are, my office never used to look like this! It used to be really cool, why didn’t you come when it was cool! It’s just a holding space now, a warehouse. That’s why it’s empty and sad and looks plundered and lifeless. Boy you should have seen it in its day, when it was young and wily and had the whole room in stitches.

My “U” key isn’t working, there’s something stuck under it, so I’ll try to steer clear of “u”s. Uh-oh, and it looks like spaces, too. Spaces is acting up. Stupid keys.

I’m working, and working very hard, but here are two quite different takes on Clive James’ new book of essays, Cultural Amnesia. (First written about, by the way, here. Kind of.) The Atlantic piece probably requires a password, sorry about that. It’s just Christopher Hitchens ranting in his usual Simon Cowell fashion. Go to B and N and read it in the store.

A. says you’re not supposed to complain about the traffic, being tired, your extra body fat or the weather. I can’t remember why. I’m too tired.

Go out there and get ‘em!

The Guardian has a piece on Britain’s most popular unread books (and a companion piece revealing their endings to save you the trouble.)  Books you buy with good intentions that end up boring your hair stiff 30 pages in, those books. 

Vernon God Little and Cloud Atlas — two of the lists’s top five in fiction — are on my list, too; couldn’t do either one.  Though I didn’t see Special Topics in Calamity Physics, jumbo yawn – maybe Brits were too smart to buy it. 

My Life was on the Non-fiction list, and yes, I have it and didn’t finish it, it’s long.  But A. and I listened to the abridged version on tape, every single riveting word. 

What’s on your list?  What dumb books are you buying, because they’re piled in toppling stacks at Barnes and Noble, and then not finishing?  M., this one’s right up your alley.

Send them here.  Also, send me a huddled mass. 

[A. took the kids to school today, thanks A.  So this is what it feels like to breathe.  They're probably thinking the same thing.] 

This one is for my son’s father (A.) and his Grandmother (H.), mostly.

Jr. and I are reading the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe book (thank you, Helen). Tonight was chapter 10, a carousing breathless sort of chapter where the children go on the lam with a couple of nice Beavers, narrowly escape the Witch, and run into Santa Claus. Then when it all settles down Mr. Beaver cuts sandwiches from the ham and Mrs. Beaver pours the tea.

I’m not one to go on, but I’m a sucker for small moments. And I said something along those lines to Jr. Excitement’s great, yes, but unreliable. In the end its the tea and ham sandwiches that mean a hill of beans.

Junior was very attentive. I was lying next to him on his bed and he was quiet and serious and looking at his wrist the whole time. When I wrapped up he said, “That little comment took you five minutes and 35 seconds.” His watch has a stopwatch. Which is obviously defective, I didn’t go on for five minutes, no way. Whatever.

We could all do with less talk and more tea.

Send flowers to your Postman.

First — I can’t find Five Little Pumpkins. I’ve renewed it three times to stall and was just informed minutes ago, by italicized screen message, that “this item has exceeded the number of renewals.” It wasn’t even that good — weak plot and the fifth pumpkin was never really developed. Now I’m buying it. Damn libraries and their return rules.

Second — Everyone knows to pretend to have read books you haven’t, or to say “Rosebud” so they’ll think you’ve seen Citizen Kane (and the other 99), but Sarah Vine presents a more intriguing concept: How to fake like you haven’t read the books you shouldn’t have but did. You know, like People Magazine’s Entertainment Almanac, or that “maudlin, embarrassing ode to a pooch“; Mitch Albom. Some of you are reading that stuff and pretending you’re not! I’m not fooled.

Third — Pun of the day: “The oil well driller had a boring job.”

Make merry.

Lisa Austin never brings me flowers.

… Instant karma’s gonna get me, I’m sure, for taking on two writers in one week. So be it.  Today I send a big blog high-five to James Wolcott for putting all of my Adam Gopnik eye rolls into words. Mr. Gopnik has just bothered us with a new book.  Thank you, James, for reviewing it — I couldn’t have made better fun of him myself!

C. and I had long fits of laughter when Adam blogged for Powell’s last year. (You might have long fits of laughter over something else, but writers are incurably nerdy, and not in a cool way). He kicked his stint off with buses “buzzing and coughing” outside his window. Yes, buses. Buzzing and coughing. Just like the bug-eyed cartoon garbage truck who coughs and burps in my kids’ picture book, I Stink. I Stink was out his window. Whee.

“Buzzing and coughing buses” became our code for “big huge bore who thinks there’s someone actually reading who cares.” (I don’t make that mistake where Teresa DiFalco dot Com is concerned, by the way. I know you all care.)

We were actually reading because he is unintentionally hilarious. Kind of like when A. and I catch Top Gun on one of the cable channels and watch it on mute. I play Maverick, and A. does Goose and Ice and we laugh ourselves silly.

Anyway, James Wolcott picks up where the coughing buses left off and begins his critique thusly: “I sometimes wonder if Adam Gopnik was put on this earth to annoy. If so, mission accomplished.” He said it, not me.

Go feed the ducks, they’re funny.

I can never get enough of Kingsley Amis, ever.  There’s a new bio out, and I’ll add it to my list in a minute.  Though don’t feel like you have to wait – buy it for me right now for crying out loud.   

Or don’t.  Instead read this delightfully well-written review from the Times Literary Supplement by Clive James.  In it you’ll find a number of acrobatic word strings that will have you shaking your head (with a slight smile and cluck, or maybe low whistle.)  But I stopped reading right near the end, to give you this:  bathysphere. 

James, you dog!  Where’d you pull that from?  It works beautifully. 

“The depths of his drinking were achieved after Jane left him, but the bathysphere was well on its way down while she was there.”

Bathysphere.  Use it in a sentence today, impress your friends.  (Send your best attempts here.  Winner gets a real bathysphere.  Or only a picture of one.)

This looks like something you should read — me, too, I guess. Written by Walter Benn Michaels, reviewed by Chris Lehman. A take on, among other things, how both the right and the left have dismissed the issue of economic equality. More or less.

“What American liberals want is for our conservatives to be racist … We want a fictional George Bush who doesn’t care about black people rather than the George Bush we’ve actually got, who doesn’t care about poor people.”

[Others of us just want some conservatives to go away.]

But I’m tired today, and this looks like more fun.

One day I hope they’ll put out a collection of Benjamin Schwarz‘s reviews. I rarely read the books he trots out, but relish the crisp wispy writing he wraps them up in. (Yes, I know “crisp” and “wispy” don’t work, but I like them, they sound good.)

Take this, for example, from his review of three new works on Cary Grant. (This is Schwarz speaking, not quotes from the books):

“That same year … he also made The Awful Truth — and seemingly from nowhere the Cary Grant persona gloriously appeared, fully formed. All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke … the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements — the cocked head, the double takes. …”

Who needs the books?

Oh, Richard Clarke is guest-blogging at Powells this week. That’s all I have to say about that.

Touchstone (of Simon and Schuster) is having an American Idol-type contest on gather.com.  Submit a brilliant completed manuscript, some people will post your 1st chapter, then a bunch of other people will vote-pick a winner.  Whee!  And then someone gets a big fat contract!  (Well, a contract.  Loaded word; one that doesn’t necessarily mean money will change hands.) 

I have to go drive a bunch of kids to school right now, but while I’m gone, send me your first chapter (or one of the items on my list).  The teresadifalco.com novel winner will get … hmm … a date with Alec Baldwin!  Or if he’s busy, A.

Chop-chop!

Famous men, yes. First, A. — Let’s have a nice round of applause for the new GM of Gidgets and Gadgets. (Note: made-up name, don’t send the flowers there). That’s right, GM. Vice President and General Manager to be exact. Hear, hear! (Sound of two hands clapping.)

Then Gore Vidal, why not? He’s 80, he’s written a trillion words (if I had a dollar for every one I could buy a war!) and he has a crusty new memoir out. You’re more than welcome to buy it for me for Christmas. Really. Buy it now. Hey, buy me Palimpset, too; save on shipping!

Anyway, the new one is Point to Point Navigation, and it covers the past 40 years. 40 years … that’s a fun stroll isn’t it? … Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Orson Welles … Fellini, Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt; they’re all here. Yes, fun. One review notes Gore favors the performers over fellow writers (big surprise).

“Writers just talk about themselves. Their selves are not terribly interesting and they’ve already written about themselves. Actors, although they’re supposed to be vain and self-centered, remember to entertain.” Yes, entertain.

Take heed this season, kids. Go to your corporate Christmas gigs, your school plays, the neighbors’ open houses, throw back a neat scotch and then for crying out loud entertain! We’ll all be better for it. While I tell you all about me.

Cheers.