I feel obliged

to at least mention that Carol Shields died July 16th. I wrote my undergrad thesis on 2 of her books - Swann: A Mystery, and The Stone Diaries -- both highly recommended (in case you were wondering, the thesis was about post-modernist voice and how it inflects the female narrator/subject... or something along those lines). She'd been suffering from cancer for the past few years, so it's not a big surprise, but I was glad to see that she merited an obituary in the NYTimes.

One guy I dated had actually heard of her, and knew she had cancer, which gave him many, many points with me. Which in retrospect, was a huge mistake. He turned out to have an ego bigger than the state of Texas. And I think all those points he earned by being able to talk intelligently about Carol Shields blinded my judgement. Or maybe I should just admit that my judgement might not be so great to begin with...