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Last night I went to a reading for Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd. In the part-memoir, part-ethnography, Nugent defines the designation of "nerd" by two non-mutually exclusive types. The one marked by obsessive interests and the other social... Read the rest of this post

I have kind of a hangover. Not from drinking. From watching Superbad. Have any of you seen it? I watched it instead of the Oscars last night and I feel as if I was turned into a teenage boy for several hours. My head still hurts. (My son was horrified that I was watching it. Mostly because he'd already seen it and knew what was in it.)

It was a great movie. Painfully funny, in the way that The Office often is. Raunchy---I won't lie. (Do not watch this with anyone you are already uncomfortable with.) But like the best YA novels, it lets you live the embarrassment without suffering any of the real-life consequences.

I also give it high marks for portraying drinking with all the accompanying vomiting, fighting, and bad decisions. And it gets true love right, too. If you ever find someone who's willing to carry you---and I mean literally pick you up and carry you---out of danger, stick by them, man. Do it.

I think my next movie is going to have to be something highly literary and refined, perhaps more of the lovely Jane Austen series on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. I will play Gillian Anderson's introductions in her calm, measured voice over and over and over, until I'm in an old mom, hormone-free trance. Because as good as it was, I don't think I can pound shots of Superbad Teenage Boy again any time soon.

To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”.

Stephanie O’Cain is an Exhibits Coordinator at NYU Press.

For over five years, Jeanette Winterson’s novel Written on the Body has been the book I return to when I need to renew my sense of admiration for the human body and condition. Winterson gives no hint as to the narrator’s gender in this torrid love affair, forcing the reader to cast aside any preconceived notions about love, loss and redemption and instead focus simply on the complexities of relationships. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

A correspondent found the sentence (I am quoting only part of it) …stole a march on the old folks and made a flying trip to the home of… in a newspaper published in north Texas in 1913 and wonders what the phrase given above in boldface means. She notes that it occurs with some regularity in the clippings at her disposal. This idiom is well-known, and I have more than once seen it in older British and American books, so I was not surprised to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). To steal (gain, get) a march on means “get ahead of to the extent of a march; gain a march by stealth,” hence figuratively “outsmart, outwit, bypass; avoid.” The earliest citation in the OED is dated to 1707. As far as I can judge, only the variant with steal has continued into the present, mainly or even only in its figurative meaning. (more…)

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The Celebutantes: On The Avenue by Antonio Pagliarulo