Spring 2023
Briefly noted
Books by WSU alumni, faculty, and WSU Press » More ...
Humor
Fall 2022
Q&A with Margaret France
Margaret France (’02 MA English) wrote the book on Bob’s Burgers.
Here, she talks about the show’s beloved characters, her favorite season, her top ten reasons to love Bob’s Burgers, and more.
What are your top 10 reasons to love Bob’s Burgers?
Its characters are weird and sad, but the show posits that they are still worthy of love, a message I appreciate hearing on a regular basis.
Routinely excellent original songs.
The shifting dynamic between family as employees and family as family.
A fancy toilet speaks like Jon Hamm.
The siblings act like siblings.
Young … » More …
Summer 2022
A View from the Middle: How an Unknown Actor Managed to Stay That Way
A review of the 2021 book by Larkin Campbell » More ...
Spring 2021
Paleo Nerds
Review of Paleo Nerds, a podcast by Ray Troll and David Strassman » More ...
Spring 2021
More podcasts to ponder
Listening recommendations created by Washington State University alumni and faculty » More ...
Summer 2019
Briefly noted
Brief reviews of books by WSU alumni, faculty, and the WSU Press: crime novel, cryptocurrency, childrens' books, humor, insects, and plants. » More ...
Spring 2017
One More Last Cast
On the addictive nature of fishing
Dennis D. Dauble ’78 MS
FishHead Press: 2016
Fishing is serious business for anglers, and absurdly funny for everyone, a truth understood fully by author Dauble. His misadventures, fishing treks, and philosophical musings fuel this amusing and thoughtful series of short true-life stories by the retired fish biologist and WSU Tri-Cities instructor.
Whether he’s griping about his buddy Leroy’s vintage—and only marginally functional—outboard motor, … » More …
Summer 2013
Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories
Sherman Alexie ’94
Grove Press, 2012
Most writers’ volumes of “new and selected” stories add only two or three new pieces to twenty or thirty old ones. More than half of Sherman Alexie’s Blasphemy is new, however, including a few lengthy stories. The success of Alexie’s teen novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian seems to have invigorated his short stories, and readers who regard them as his best work will be … » More …
Summer 2011
The Lady Who Kept Things
There was once a small, plump, good-natured lady who lived in a great old house with a cantankerous husband named Harold. She was about the best mate a man could have and he was about the worst mate anything could have.
The lady, whose name was Emma, had a peculiar habit, however, and that was that she never threw anything away. Her closets bulged with heaps of clothes and stacks of magazines and balls of string and boxes of buttons— in short, just about anything that had ever entered into the life of Emma was still there someplace, boxed or bundled up in the great … » More …
Summer 2011
The Storyteller—Patrick McManus ’56, ’59 MA
Patrick McManus’s comic formula depends on his creation of a world of oddly named characters with generous and adventurous souls. And a markedly different perspective. “As far back as I can remember,” he writes, “I have seen funny. What may horrify normal people may strike me as hilarious.”
» More ...