I did come out of my hollow log long enough to write a book review for The Seattle Times:

It’s a difficult time for bookworms. We fear the next generation will have to visit interactive museum exhibits to turn pages of an actual, physical book. (Yes, it’s true our worries tend to recede while we’re waiting for the Kindle to download, but we do worry.) “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” (W.W. Norton, 263 pp., $26.95), by Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt, is especially well-timed for our neo-biblio age. Among its many teachings, this book assures us that dramatic change in manuscript-delivery systems need not erode the power of the words…

For the rest of it, click here.

(I also noticed that a teeny bunch of  cauliflower was going to cost me upwards of $4…that’s a story for another time.)

Right inside the entrance was an enormous display of avocados, salsa and bags of organic chips–hey, even vegans watch the Superbowl. A big sign hung over the table blaring:

CONVENTIONAL AVOCADOS:  5 for $5

No, “conventional” here does not mean middle-class, suit-wearing avocados clinging to the status quo, it means “not organic.” It is a common term now; I had somehow managed to miss this linguistic development. When I checked out the WF website, I read this:

Organic foods set the standard for top quality freshness, texture, flavor and variety. These foods are produced without the standard array of potentially harmful, environmentally long-lasting agricultural chemicals commonly used on conventional food products since the 1950s.

WF is, of course, right to label the provenance of  produce. “Organic” is a USDA designation that must be earned, and these avocados, tasty as they may be, were not worthy of the O-badge. But I couldn’t help feeling, well, judged, as I grabbed my $5 worth and hurried off: Suddenly I’m conventional, typical, pedestrian in my choice of guacamole ingredients. I am conforming.

Maybe a sign saying “Old School Avocados” would be better.

And the reading light is too low.

Oh, and no snacks. Or bathroom.

And the only other human is the person who was meanest to you in grade school.

You, word thieves, are scum.

(Click here for “Copyright Infringement and Me,” a blog post about plagiarism by “Cooks Source Magazine” and one editor’s ridiculous response that inspired the above sentiments. The rant against Cooks Source is going viral and the unleashed fury is wonderful to behold.)

Photo by Tracy Tkach/Facebook

As I work my way through a review book, I often stop and picture the sort of people who will fall in love with it. By the end I’ve assembled a roomful of imaginary party guests. Sometimes it’s festive; other times I just want them the hell out of my living room.

The folks conjured up by the writings of Seattle author David Shields are always a smart bunch — funny, tolerably neurotic, well-read. We all like sports, love language and are traditionalists who nonetheless enjoy journalism and other nonfiction that reveal the writer’s opinions. I’ve assumed this crowd to be middle-aged, like me.

When I finished his new book, “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” the group defied easy literary profiling: That young rapper in deep conversation with an old guy whose life was revolutionized by Allen Ginsberg and the Beats. A gaggle of elbow-patched Proustniks trading insights with novelists who are grafting paragraphs together on their iPhones.

I figure they share Shields’ fascinations: the evolution of literary genre; curiosity (or skepticism) about the canon that sets down boundaries between memoir and fiction; biography and literary nonfiction; poetry and photo captions. This book doesn’t call for reshaping writing conventions; it insists that they’ve always been protean…

Read the rest of my review in The Seattle Times, here.

(Need more Shields? I was fortunate to also review his last book, “The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead.” Click here. And his website is here.)

Note to readers: In the case of paid reviews written for The Seattle Times or any other newspaper, the copy of the review book is provided by the book-page editor. I do not chose the books I review for newspapers; review opportunities are offered to me and I can accept or reject the assignments. Other reviews (unpaid, alas) I write for this blog might result from discovering a book in the library or from a friend’s recommendation. If I know the author personally, I will say so.

Erich Segal, the Yale classicist who wrote the wildly successful “Love Story” and Robert B. Parker, whose nearly 40 lively novels delivered a memorable, wise-cracking detective named Spenser and a succession of short-haired pointers, all named Pearl, will be missed by their fans.

Both Parker and Segal (a scholar who horrified peers with his pop titles) provided countless hours of escapism, entertainment…even some enlightenment. And at least one very enduring aphorism. Both placed novels in Boston and both populated their fictional worlds with smart women.

Look around on the next bus, train or airplane you’re in — if you don’t see someone with a Parker book, I’ll buy you lunch. And whether or not you were around to read the first printing of “Love Story” (or see the 1970 movie), surely you know by now that Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

During the Q&A, Irving was asked how he handles a “poor review.” The questioner could have been referencing any one of several critiques of Irving’s latest novel, “Last Night in Twisted River.”

Irving answered with some venom, in itself a not uncommon attitude for a prolific author exasperated by years of dealing with reviewers. In effect he said, “After 12 novels, it is possible that I am much better at what I do than a reviewer is at what he does.”

It got me thinking about reviewing; what makes a good one, good. And a bad one, bad.

I’ve turned this question over in my mind for a long time. I started reviewing for daily and weekly newspapers back about 1990. The books are almost always assigned to me by an editor; I don’t pick them. I do a fair amount of fiction, especially regional writers, but my strengths as a reviewer tend to nonfiction: religion, American history, biography.

(I’ve also been called on to review a lot of work on mental illness and self-help topics, which probably doesn’t reflect too favorably on how editors see me, but whatever. God knows there’s a lot written that falls under those headings, so you won’t hear any whining from me.)

An accomplished journalist I know has been ranting to me for years about the need for reviewers to be highly critical, not just point readers to new not-to-be-missed books. Not only does that keep readers engaged, he says, it gives the reviewer more credence.

He’s not wrong, but I don’t fully agree. Too often book reviewers do what I call the Reviewer Waltz: Step forward with one compliment, then back. Some sideways praise, then step away briskly. They so fear being considered soft that they opt for brittle. Or worse, they bury their opinion in such dense lecturing that the reader is too exhausted to go find the actual book and see for herself.

My own rules for reviews go something like this:

1 – If it stinks, I don’t review it.
One exception: If the author is someone so talented that this new-and-awful book is going to make fans feel deeply betrayed.

2 – Consumer protection is part of my job.
Literary quality aside, sometimes I need to provide a heads-up that will save a book buyer from misstep…or mortification. A novel by pop writer Eric Jerome Dickey was such a case when it veered from his usual frank treatment of sexuality to good ol’ fashioned porn. Not the best gift book for a conservative mother-in-law. Likewise, a nonfiction book packaged as a feminist treatment of women’s careers was really a right-wing wolf in hip-sheep’s clothing — and needed to be labeled as such.

2 – Read at least some of the author’s earlier work before writing about the new book.

3 – Aim for historical, cultural and literary references that result in I-feel-smarter! for the reader, rather than that Damn, I’m smart! feeling for me.

4 – Resist the cheap one-liner for a laugh. (I fail at this one sometimes.)

5 – When the review is done, ask myself this question out loud:

“How does this serve the reader?”

If my answer sounds like waffly bullshit, it is. Start over.

Oh, and for what it’s worth: Irving is right, he is better at what he does than most reviewers are at what we do.

I wish I’d never signed up for all those “career feeds” in the first place, but that’s what a day with a head cold and nothing good on pay-per-view cable can do to a person.

The job ad touts a community-relations position with a big international nonprofit that has an Oregon office. In the middle of its windy description of duties, this gem appears:

“The Community-Relations Officer will focus matrixed teams on matters of cross-agency benefit.”

I’m sure if I had any idea what this meant I would be an excellent person to do it. Alas, I will just continue to focus my un-matrixed team-of-one on cross-room trips from desk to ‘fridge.

Rest in peace, Mr. Safire.

In the section I was reading today, he used a word I have not seen in a long time: usufruct. (Say “youse-zoo-frucht”) It usually crops up in legal writings, meaning the use of property not one’s own, carried out in a way that doesn’t harm or devalue it.

There is nothing like going off to hunt down the origin of a word in order to avoid work, household tasks, exercise, bill paying. So, of course I did just that.

The word derives from the Latin usus et fructus meaning “use and enjoyment.”

I took Latin about 100 years ago. Despite my mediocre grades then and dodgy memory now, it still helps me figure out and retain the meaning of words. At the time the only thing I liked about the class was that every vocabulary word seemed to have a story, a bit of history, behind it.

It was a further bonus that no one was really sure how Latin was pronounced, so it did not have the tonal challenges of Spanish or French. We read it aloud as if speaking weirdly spelled English, which suited me just fine. (I once scored so low on a Romance-language ability test that I was asked to re-take it; the test graders assumed I’d had a damaged audio tape.)

For all its stolid structure, there is something warm and quite subtle about Latin. The fact that this phrase has been co-opted to describe the dull concept of what is essentially right-of-way to a neighboring property is beside the point.

When the Romans said usus et fructus, however they pronounced the words, there surely was a lilt to their voices. They were enjoying the moment, and no one else was the worse for it.