Author Archives: ron

Cuil

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I dimly remember the days of search engine plurality. When you wanted to search the web, you had a number of choices: Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Northern Light, Lycos, Infoseek. If all of that was too much to think about, you … Continued

The Indian Clerk

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Bookstores are dangerous places for me. Despite the fact that I’m a librarian and can easily borrow any book I want, I will still manage to spend money when I go to a bookstore. The stores that are especially likely … Continued

The Moonstone

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Somehow, despite my general love of Victoriana, I had until recently never read anything by Wilkie Collins, a friend of Dickens best known for The Moonstone and The Woman in White, both viewed as important early examples of detective novels. … Continued

Watchmen

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I will begin with a confession: I am a comic book geek. Ever since I could read, I have enjoyed the garishly colored adventures of both the Marvel and DC pantheons of spandex-clad heroes. Of course, as I have grown … Continued

Social Bibliography

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About a year ago I discovered del.icio.us and fell in love with social bookmarking. On practical grounds, I like having all my bookmarks available from any computer. On less practical grounds, the whole tagging/folksonomy thing appeals to the part of … Continued

Pu, Part Deux

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When last I visited pu-erh tea, I was prepared to leave it as an interesting curiosity of the tea world. I had done my duty by trying a pu-erh and could now move on to some other exotic corner of … Continued

Emma

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When I was a senior in high school, my classmates and I were forced to read Emma by Jane Austen. I hated it. Not that there was anything wrong with Emma, of course, but Jane Austen does not and never … Continued

Karajan and Beethoven

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I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend with Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto, and for an interesting reason. I recently read an article by one Norman Lebrecht on the subject of the conductor Herbert von Karajan, the centenary of whose … Continued

Phineas Redux

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Trollope’s massive Phineas Redux is the fourth of his “Palliser” novels and recounts the further adventures of Phineas Finn, the eponymous hero of the second in that series. When I wrote about Phineas Finn I expressed some dissatisfaction with the … Continued

more from Tao of Tea

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I thought that my first foray into the world of pu-er warranted its own entry. Today I’ll discuss three other teas that came with the pu-er in my recent Tao of Tea order: one black, one green, one oolong. Black … Continued