ajmatt blog

When the news is to depressing to bear, where does one turn? To the past, naturally. While surveying my LibraryThing account, I noticed I’ve recently toured: the plague years, frontier life, and the Great Depression. For free entertainment that will lift your spirits, head to your local library and pick up:
Company of Liars by Karen [...]

A free book arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago courtesy of LibraryThing and Harper Collins Publishers. What does that mean? It means I am a LibraryThing Early Reviewer!
I signed up to be an early reviewer for the first time last month, requested a few books, and forgot about it. I never thought [...]

I’ve been looking for a venue to jot down thoughts on the books I read. My reviews don’t fit Amazon or LibraryThing, and both seem like very public places to post. So I decided to post them here, to a comfortably sized audience.
Jamestown: A Novel by Matthew Sharpe.
This book jumped off the “new” shelf [...]

If you’ve visited in the last six months or so, chances are Matt and I took you to Bangkok 54. We rarely go a month without visiting this place, our favorite Thai restaurant in the D.C. area.
We almost always start with curry puffs, and try one of the fun cocktails they make with crushed fresh [...]

Allegra and I rapidly read the last Harry Potter this past weekend - once it arrived Saturday around 2pm, I continued to give Allegra the evil eye and saying things like “Done yet?!?” until she finished the book after reading all day Saturday and a bit Sunday morning. Of course, I started in right [...]

If you are an English major lost in a corporate world that doesn’t value your vast knowledge of British literature, looking for a way to return to your college glory days (when “work” meant reading Gulliver’s Travels or Wuthering Heights), and want to do so in a way that is easy and can be done [...]

Happy birthday to me! Matt took me to the fancy 2941 last night, one of the few around here that has top-notch reviews from both Washingtonian and the Washington Post.
I knew I was in for a good time when we drove up to complimentary valet parking and Matt said, “I’m confused… am I driving on [...]