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Big fire in a big fireplace

Pour yourself a hot drink and get comfortable.

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Reading time: 4 minutes

I wanted something to happen.

In the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return (2016), Hisham Matar goes to northern Italy with the intention of contemplating art.

Background on...

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Reading time: 6 minutes

The range is impressive.

Like many fans of travel writing, especially members of the travel tribe, I enjoy reading guide books.

Background on this series is here.

I tend to reach for Frommer...

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Reading time: 6 minutes

There's a lot to process.

Before reading An African in Greenland, the story of Tété-Michel Kpomassie's 1965 trip to the world's second largest island, I suspected it might contain tales of prejud...

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Reading time: 5 minutes

Definitions are a terrible way to start.

Years ago, I would occasionally peruse editorials by the legendarily unimpressive Jonah Goldberg. It astonished me that anyone would feel compelled to wri...

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Reading time: 4 minutes

I'm sure they felt good to write.

Nothing is easier than setting up contemptible demons and then cutting them off at the knees. Deserving candidates are everywhere, and when the hammer drives a pos...

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About

A smiling Francis and me, sitting outside in front of some shrubs

Some basics

A brief biographical sketch

Me on top of a sunny Mt Pilatus in Switzerland, with mountains in the background

Travel

Pardon the saccharine and the obvious, but travel is everything

A couple standing in front of a large Gothic church, on a bridge over the Seine

France

France deserves its own section

Francis, as a two year-old in a car seat, in sunglasses reading a French picture book

Reading

The bullshit of daily life? I'd rather read.

Stage with musicians going at it—they're Gogol Bordello, and they're crazy

Music

Let me take you back

Little boy sitting on a big white bed, looking at a tablet

Television

I watch a lot more television than movies

Live action from a soccer game at Crew Stadium—yellow versus blue

Soccer

The only sport that matters

Ugly photo of a pig knuckle after it's been eaten—really, it looks horrible

Food

As a travel writer, I have to talk about food

Me in an outdoor restaurant drinking from a green coconut with a long straw

Dumb stuff

You will not feel smarter after reading this

Dumpster full of garbage

Minimalism

Trying to live simply

Me getting out of a red Ferrari F430 with a guy clapping for me

Other Interests

I've only driven a Ferrari once

Dude wearing orange pants and orange and green shoes walking on wet grass

Get off my lawn

A few brief rants

Recent Tweets

If you toggle the switch above the words "Recent Tweets" and it still says, "Nothing to see here - yet," it means the idiot who broke Twitter either hasn't gotten around to fixing this feature, or intentionally broke it to get us to pay for it (which is moronic, I can easily live without it and it generated traffic to his site).