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CLEA SIMON

Latest Articles

What Would Joan Do?

Jackie or Marilyn, Pete or Roger — they are what they eat. So, who are you?
So you've got a party coming up, a gift due, or a difficult-to-please significant other.

By: CLEA SIMON | December 08, 2009

GI blues

A former Army medic tells his story
"I think to an extent all soldiers come back with PTSD. If you do what we do and see what we see, if you're not affected in a deep way, then that's a problem."

By: CLEA SIMON | December 01, 2009

A Bean grows in Brighton

How five guys in a garage put together Boston's biggest little snowboard brand
Deep in a Brighton garage, five guys are dreaming of winter.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 17, 2009

Get into gear

Hit the slopes in style with the coldest season’s hottest innovations
A new season brings new toys, and snow sports fanatics are nothing if not gearheads.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 17, 2009

Hilary Mantel’s Booker winner
To call a 560-page novel “spare” sounds ridiculous. But though Wolf Hall is both lengthy and dense, this book — essentially a character study of the 16th-century statesman Thomas Cromwell — is also as close to bare-bones writing as one can imagine, a stark and unsentimental triumph.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 02, 2009

Victorian jewel

A fictional setting that never fades
What price beauty? That's the question lovely Grace Hammer has to answer as her world begins to fall apart.

By: CLEA SIMON | September 09, 2009

Interview: Joseph Finder

True fiction
"Since 9/11, thousands of CIA employees have quit to go private. Basically, these guys are private spies."

By: CLEA SIMON | August 18, 2009

Undercover

April Smith's mystery/thrillers delve in darkness
Ana Grey is the fearless heroine of April Smith's dark and thoughtful thriller series. But reading these fast-paced books shows the question to be more complicated. Ana Grey is, after all, not only a brave FBI agent, but also the cowering daughter of a racist bully.

By: CLEA SIMON | June 09, 2009

Trail of tunes

Music al fresco at summer fests
The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.

By: CLEA SIMON | June 09, 2009

River song

A lyrical turn in the South
Tim Gautreaux writes of a South that never changes. Dense, humid, with a fecundity that is more than a match for any human development, his South is largely a no man's land where the trees close off the sky, their roots rise "from the soppy mud like stalagmites," and the calm is broken only by the "stout windings of water moccasins."

By: CLEA SIMON | May 13, 2009

Ready to roll

How to give your bike a proper spring cleaning
Whether you've been slogging through the streets on two wheels all winter, or are only now retrieving your bicycle, dusty and cobwebbed, from the basement, the extra light, the warm air, and the promise of snow-free roads are calling.

By: CLEA SIMON | May 06, 2009

Bytes of knowledge

Getting the most from an online education
Once upon a time, we thought it was novel to be able to buy books in our bathrobes.

By: CLEA SIMON | April 29, 2009

Bloody good

Gore, pop, and dogs take the page
It's the ultimate high-concept book idea. A Mad-Libs smash-up of social satire and "ultraviolent zombie mayhem," designed from the title inward.

By: CLEA SIMON | April 22, 2009

Botswana beauty

HBO does Alexander McCall Smith proud
As any fan of traditional mysteries knows, a good detective must pay attention to details. And Precious Ramotswe, the founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, finds that truer than most.

By: CLEA SIMON | March 16, 2009

Interview: Christopher Monks

Gameboy
Ever feel you should earn points for remembering to get up in the morning?

By: CLEA SIMON | January 15, 2009

Big dig

Unsworth and oil in Mesopotamia
Unsworth and oil in Mesopotamia

By: CLEA SIMON | January 06, 2009

Rare treats

There are foodie consumers and there are foodie creators, but they all appreciate something unusual
They've dined you, they've wined you with meals both wonderful and offal.

By: CLEA SIMON | December 08, 2008

Interview: Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky

Two historians pen a bodice ripper
Long-time friends Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky didn't set out to write Blindspot, a novel complete with murder, scandal, slave stealing, and some very hot sex.

By: CLEA SIMON | December 02, 2008

Technically improved

Ski and snowboard gear refined, not redefined
Snow sports shred the space-time continuum this winter, with new styles that push technological boundaries for form and function.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 18, 2008

Interview: John Hodgman

One man's operating system
Long before John Hodgman became universally recognized as the systems-challenged PC in Apple’s ads, he was writing fake trivia for such publications as McSweeney’s and the New York Times Magazine.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 21, 2008

Murder, she wrote

Interview: Tana French's deep crime novels
"It’s always more fun to write people who are really messed up or really vicious."

By: CLEA SIMON | August 05, 2008

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