Music CDs cost no more than a movie ticket. Books don't cost much more than dinner at Applebee's. But things -- things suggest diamonds, watches, foreign travel, furs, cars. Expensive stuff, in short. Stuff you won't be buying this year.

But there are only so many cool books to give,...

It's the season of the boxed sets and the Christmas CD. (Bob Dylan, anyone?) The month of Susan Boyle and Glee, Rihanna and Lady GaGa.

To quote Sarah Palin, "Thanks, but no thanks."

For me, the holidays are the ideal time for unexpected gifts -- music that defines...

Come now the holidays, and -- if we can stop thinking about the bad news that surrounds us -- maybe we can make these few weeks an island of caring and kindness. In another universe, we might express those tender feelings directly, but that feels so icky to most of...

The first time I took the elevator to Twyla Tharp's penthouse was a grey, chilly morning in early April. We sat in her minimalist office that overlooked a terrace that overlooked Central Park, but when you're in a room with Twyla Tharp, it's hard to notice anything else.

To say...

When last we left Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, they had triumphantly self-published Canal House Cooking Volume No. 1 -- and we had adopted it as our never-fail summer cookbook. Now our tans have faded, the leaves have fallen and they're back with Volume No. 2,...

For almost half of her 7.5 years, our daughter has gone to sleep as her mother delivers a lecture. Not the kind of lecture that follows bad behavior -- our kid just prefers facts to fiction. And so her mother gives a nightly discourse called "Bore Me to Sleep."

Our...

I came to Cormac McCarthy so late that the first book of his I tried to read was "No Country for Old Men". It was so silly I had to put it down. Forget the very satisfying violence and the plot about stolen money. Consider the Texas sheriff who meditates...

I can tell the holidays are coming because cookie baking has commenced. Right now we're in the experimental mode. I've just sampled chocolate cookies with chocolate-covered espresso beans, and although they seemed fine to me, they were unceremoniously trashed -- not up to the standards of the establishment, I was...

Two guys I didn't know asked me to write a piece about men for an anthology about Good Men. I have learned to be cautious about invitations like this, so I asked for a list of possible topics. Sure, they said, and hit SEND.

"Boomers wasted years on sex and...

For a writer of memoirs, Mary Karr has had a charmed life. That is, a lot has happened, almost all of it colorful, much of it painful. And, in each of her three books, she's followed the advice of mentor Tobias Wolff ("Take no care for your dignity") and produced...

Once upon a time in Denmark, there was a good brother and a bad brother.

When we meet them, Jannik, the bad brother, is just getting out of prison -- he's such a screwup he failed even at bank robbery.

Michael, the good brother, has a beautiful...

Of all the towering figures of the twentieth century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likable. It is a joy to write his life, and to read about it. None holds more lessons, especially for youth: How to use a...

If you read nothing else this month, please read pages 201 to 253 of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.

It won't take long.

By the time Nelson Mandela walks into that stadium, your heart will be pounding. When he enters the Springboks...

I first heard about The Help soon after it was published in February.

But it's 444 pages. I put it off.

Very quickly, it became the #3 fiction bestseller.

Twenty-eight weeks later, it's still holding on, a remarkable achievement for a book by a first-time novelist....

I was interviewing George Soros as the Dow rapidly shed 300 points and crashed through the 10,000 level.

"Is this it?" I asked.

Soros shrugged -- a very calm reaction from an investor who might have seen his portfolio shrink by hundreds of millions of dollars in a matter...

Last winter, the HeadButler.com community raised funds for a medical mission to Honduras. Now four students at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a team of doctors -- a general surgeon, one OB/GYN, one anesthesiologist, and possibly a radiologist -- have committed themselves to another mission, this time to Liberia....

I never watch Meet the Press, but I tuned in to see David Gregory kick off NBC's coverage of "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything." Instigated by Maria Shriver, this year-long study is the centerpiece of a week of programming on NBC and a cover story...

I read the new Philip Roth novel the other day -- it's just 140 pages, with fewer words than usual per page, so you can knock it off in a few hours -- and I'm still disturbed.

This in an improvement over my reaction when I finished it.

I...

Success, as Woody Allen observed, only makes you more of what you already are.

If you don't believe that, just consider the case of Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, the main character in A Face in the Crowd.

When we first see him, he's a drifter doing short time...

"I'm writing too many songs, and then I have to put them out -- I'm sorry," Mark Knopfler said at the start of what seems like our annual phone call.

But if Knopfler is going to make CDs like Get Lucky, he can call...