Cheap Eats 2006

Food Reviews & Stories Miss stuffing yourself into your Italian nonna's crowded dining room? Sidle up to this authentic eatery, at once romantic and family-friendly. Start with a gargantuan Caesar ($6, $9 with chicken or shrimp) and a surprisingly lengthy red-wine selection ($6-$9 a glass). For entrees, try basics like th More

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 Karla Starr

Cheap Eats 2006

Food Reviews & Stories You'd be surprised at what can come out of a strip mall in Beaverton. Start with the skirt-steak salad topped with creamy horseradish dressing ($9.95) or savory pierogies ($5.50). Move onto a club sandwich ($8.25) or halibut fish and chips ($10.50), both served with scrumptious fries. The pseudo spo More

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 Karla Starr

An Idiot's Guide To Other People's Lives

A roundup of recent memoirs and biographies worth checking out.

Books The Bill from My Father, by Bernard Cooper (Simon and Schuster, 240 pages, $24)Who it's about: Cooper, trying to make sense of his father as the vicious, distant lawyer succumbs to dementia. When he w ... More

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 Karla Starr

Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences

Lawrence Weschler's Everything is actually illuminated.

Books First, Lawrence Weschler freelanced for L.A. Weekly; then, an interview with artist Robert Irwin he completed with UCLA's Oral History Program became his ticket to The New Yorker, where he wrote for o ... More

Wednesday, March 8, 2006 Karla Starr

The $10,000 Dinner Guest

Talk of the Stumptown with Susan Orlean.

Books After watching the New Yorker staff writer and author of The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean, emerge from the elevator of Portland's Westin Hotel and spryly walk to the lobby, the first thing that pops int ... More

Wednesday, March 1, 2006 Karla Starr

Literary Threesome

Read what all the cool kids are reading. You want to be cool, don't you?

Books The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier (Pantheon, 252 pages, $22.95). African mythology holds that, after death, people become one of the sasha, the living-dead who still exist in the memo ... More

Wednesday, February 22, 2006 Karla Starr

He loves us, he loves us not.

Wry, scatologically inclined humorist on testicles, James Frey and the future.

Books There is no reason David Sedaris' books move like chili through the digestive system, while the six books of Jonathan Ames—a humorist of the spontaneous pee-inducing caliber—do not. While ... More

Wednesday, February 8, 2006 Karla Starr

The Brooklyn Follies

Auster's latest propels a page-turning plot with predictable characters.

Books The Brooklyn FolliesBy Paul Auster (Henry Holt & Co., 320 pages, $24)When Paul Auster's 12th novel, The Brooklyn Follies, begins with the sentence "I was looking for a quiet place to die," it's easy t ... More

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 Karla Starr

Linda Carroll, Unplugged

Courtney Love's mother, the daughter of esteemed novelist Paula Fox, tells WW all about her non-tell-all memoir.

Featured Stories On a frost-sprinkled afternoon in the small college town of Corvallis, the smell of fireplaces and the clatter of passing school buses surround Linda Carroll's house. In her driveway is a pair of blac ... More

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 Karla Starr

Title Wave

A flood of new books about Hurricane Katrina are great for the publishing industry. But are they good for readers — or New Orleans?

Featured Stories Like a storm of bad metaphors flooding your nearest bookstore, the biggest publishing trend of 2006 is already Hurricane Katrina. While the typical publishing process—from a book's initial conce ... More

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 Karla Starr