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From Phyllida's Desk

Oxfordian Snobbery

Many years ago I came across one of the books espousing the "Oxfordian theory," the belief that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare.
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Double Indemnity

In all the "discussions" about the cost of healthcare and President Obama's castrated legislation, one question that is rarely asked is: why do we use "insurance" to pay for what is, or should be, on ongoing, regular household expense?

For those of you wondering who is this phantom blogger who has taken over Ann Herendeen's web site, and what happened to the real Ann Herendeen who writes about her bisexual m/m/f ménage fiction,  Read More 
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Crying Over Filet Mignon

I live alone, making spaghetti with sauce from a jar tests the limits of my culinary abilities, and I love red meat. So one Thanksgiving I invited just one very good friend over and I served filet mignon.

When I put that first big bite of charred-on-the-outside, oozing-blood-on-the-inside tender beef into my mouth, I almost cried. It was that good.  Read More 
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Beautiful Metaphors, Ugly Memoirs

Colm Toibin, in a review of a biography of E.M. Forster, derided the idea of the "honest novel" (as the biographer, Wendy Moffat, described Forster's Maurice): "novels should not be honest. They are a pack of lies that are also a set of metaphors … they are not forms of self-expression, or true confession."  Read More 
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