Your New Year's Eve Etiquette Dilemmas, Solved
Just in time for the first holiday of 2013, here are all, or at least a few, of your most pressing New Year's Eve questions, and some answers, for the night ahead. You're welcome.
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Allow me to present a hypothesis: Dan Brown is the Anne Hathaway of authors. Hard-working, serious about his craft (even if others aren't), with lots and lots of money to show for his work. And people love to hate him as much, and sometimes even more, than they love to love him.
Just in time for the first holiday of 2013, here are all, or at least a few, of your most pressing New Year's Eve questions, and some answers, for the night ahead. You're welcome.
At an unnamed bar somewhere in the middle of Anytown, America, in the late hours of December 31, 2012, a group of New Year's Resolutions were deep in conversation.
"Fiscal cliff," "spoiler alert," and "trending" beware: Michigan's Lake Superior State University has issued their list for the 38th year in a row.
Books — staid and intellectual cultural artifacts that they so often are — were not all just staid or intellectual this year. Not nearly. There were, in fact, publishing scandals, dramas, and plot twists galore. Oh, and Philip Roth.
There's a piece in The New York Times today about the new-new parenting, i.e., teaching your children manners by hiring etiquette counselors instead of going the DIY route. Because why would you do it yourself?
As part of The Atlantic Wire's Year in Review, we've gathered our favorites from among all the ridiculous, kernel-of-truth in a popcorn-bowl-of-pleasure stories reported by the Times and beyond, and bestowed them with their own special awards.
The author of Shutter Island, Mystic River, and Gone Baby Gone is also the owner of a rescue beagle named Tessa. Well, Tessa has gone missing, and Lehane has offered the sweetest sort of reward an author can give.
We are firmly, if temporarily, ensconced in that weird, limbo-esque time that exists between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Here are some things to do while we wait for 2013.
There's a piece on the front page of The New York Times today that's inspiring lots of "dating is hell" commentary from around the Internet, because from this piece comes the "decidedly unromantic question" of our time: "What's your credit score?"
Poor vermouth. It's long been "confined to dusty bottles in the depths of the liquor cabinet," ignored for its own merit, and only considered delicious when paired with others (like vodka, or gin). But times have changed.
The Middlesteins novelist sleeps with her phone on the floor next to her bed, but leaves it at home each morning as she writes for an hour in a notebook without facing a screen.
The latest info from the investigation in Connecticut indicates that Nancy Lanza may have left her son alone at home before the shootings, and begins to paint a clearer picture of Adam Lanza himself.
We've compiled a (festive) diagnostic guide to various reading styles for your seasonal enjoyment, with book suggestions for each. Happy reading!
If you have or are part of something called a "family," you can bet that someone's going to want, need, and expect a photo of the two or three or five or 17 of you this season. And these days, they expect you looking cheery and doing something fun.
There is no better way for a semantic-minded person to remember the year than with those words we'd just as soon never write or see or hear spoken again. From "artisanal" to "curate," "gaffe" to "legitimate rape," and "meggings" to "ugh," here's our list.
The first question to ask oneself, right now, is "Am I a Christmas tree type of person?" If you are, read on! If you're not, read on, too, because you may find yourself becoming one.
In a mysterious, confusing case, there are so far very few surprises, but there are already lessons worth learning.
Can we talk about this now that so many people have died at a school in Newtown? And if we can't, why can't we? Why haven't we already?
Is there anything more difficult than buying an inexpensive gift for a coworker you don't really know that well? Yes, probably. But not much! Here's what you should and shouldn't give.
Adult fiction and nonfiction were pretty phenomenal this year. Here, we celebrate 34 of our favorite reads from the last 12 months — with superlatives!
Guy Trebay writes of a horrifying new trend in the New York Times Thursday Styles: Woman are wearing slippers. Slippers out on the streets, in plain sight, in full view of members of the same and opposite sex!
In a wave of irony, it is O.K. to do things one otherwise wouldn't. Right? Because you're being ironic. Meet the newest foodie trend of ironic dining, as inspired by Pete Wells' review of Guy Fieri's restaurant, and find out how to dine ironically for yourself!
Don't worry that you'll never see a date like this again: worry about these 12 things you absolutely need to do on the only opportunity you're going to have to do things on 12/12/12.
The pursuit of Zero Dark Inbox is a diligent movement to eliminate all unread messages, but what about the rest of us?
Many of us are cutting to the chase and simply buying gifts for ourselves this season, according to the market research. 'Tis the season for getting yourself a little something, apparently.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has just undergone a five-year revision process, and it was not as dull as it sounds. Not nearly.
Which were the best—most amusing, most mortifying, funniest, most cringeworthy, and most interesting—mistakes of the year? Herewith, our favorites.
Slate's Katy Waldman has cast a cold, malevolent eye upon grapefruit this mid-winter morn and declared it "disgusting," a gift you should never give to anyone you care about. But surely there are worse gifts. Like these.
How many baby showers can a person go to, really? Not to worry, there is a new type of baby shower in town. It is less elaborate, for second or third or fourth children: Fewer guests. Minimal decorations. A twee name of its own.
We honor the 33 books that mattered to us in this year's breakout literary genre, with a little help from some writerly and book-loving folks, including authors Eliot Schrefer, Ally Condie, Ruta Supetys, Andrea Cremer, R.L. Stine, and others.
In 2012, enough female writers are still changing their names to appear as men to merit a piece in The Wall Street Journal today. Which is to say, there is still a long way to go.
Here's your semantic government news that reads a bit like an Onion article of the day. But what's it all about, really?
Do you like the "aesthetic of a rugged Americana lifted from a make-believe past [that] has gained dominion over swaths of New York, especially downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn"? You are a fan of Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer.
This story is not just a story about a man and the person who pushed him to his death on the tracks of the subway. There are reverberations from that tragic incident that will continue to run through our minds for days, weeks, and maybe months.
Hark! Merriam-Webster has revealed another much anticipated word-of-the-year designation: the dictionary website's 10 most looked-up words of 2012.
The New York Post's Sara Stewart reports that our mourning of the dinner party came too soon. It's not dead at all; it just changed locations, and its cast of roving characters.
What are we really doing when we're sitting in front of the TV laughing at yet another smackdown between the Real Housewives of Wherever? Sometimes it's simple, sometimes it's more complicated, and the truth of the matter is, it probably varies for each of us. We look at 10 shows.
Gift giving can be perilous! So, how do you give gifts the right way? There is some science to this, Sumathi Reddy writes in The Wall Street Journal.
Fathers are doing more of the family shopping, and more of the caregiving, too. So are these new Barbie construction sets for girls, or for their dads?
On Day Two of the news, we are reminded that Will and Kate will do things differently. They are not the old-school monarchy of stiff upper lips and cold rigidity we used to know. They are adamantly modern, and their parenting style will be like that, too.
Call it some sort of lapsed historical sentiment; maybe we sort of wish, in America, that we had our own royals, even as we attempt to replace kings and queens with Kennedys and Kardashians.
The text message is a real grownup now, turning 20 years old on this very day. How can it be?!
It's pretty fantastic, this picture from the Kennedy Center Honors Gala dinner at the State Department last night: Meryl and Hillary are an itsy-teeny bit just like us!
What does age mean when the contraints of being old are evolving every day? It means it's getting better all the time.
What happens when one NYU student replies to 39,978 others? Things go nuts, on TV, the Internet, and the world, and so on. Now it's transitioned into a handy anecdote on the state of how to use email.
In this week's Y.A. for Grownups column I'm paying special homage to the oft under-applauded but always important art of the books; specifically, the cover art that's appeared on books published for teens and middle-grade audiences this year.
In this week's Thursday Style section, the New York Times presents a terrifying conundrum for the world in which we live: Is the dinner party, that elegant trademark of yore, in its final throes?
In his Salon piece, "I was a male spinster," Tim Gihring speaks to a feeling common to men and women of a certain age who haven't yet seen fit to do the proposal-and-ring thing in the time expected of them.
Parents are paying tutors to do their precious offspring's work for them! Clearly, this is against the rules. But it's happening anyway.
The nearly 80-year-old "petite poly-hyphenate" has stayed busy, doing talk shows and benefits and fund-raisers, awarding her Peace Price to the members of Pussy Riot, and more. She is also designing men's wear for Opening Ceremony, which... well, see for yourself.
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