Articles by Janet Potter
November 7, 2012
Election Night in Chicago 0
I was lucky enough to attend President Obama’s Election Night rally in Chicago, and wrote a diary of the evening for The Awl. “Let’s Stay Together” played, Vivica A. Fox walked by.
November 6, 2012
Addicted to Weird: An Interview with Jon Ronson 2
Everybody in the book feels in some way as if they’re lost at sea, and are grasping for something to get them through. And the thing that they often grasp for is something that’s kind of irrational, makes no sense, is ridiculous. And it becomes almost a celebration of irrationality as a human character trait to be cherished.
October 25, 2012
Elegy for a Grey Cat: On Grief, Books, and His Dark Materials 14
For grief there’s A Year of Magical Thinking, for breakups there’s A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, but what could I read when I lost my cat? Cats usually show up in books as witches or set dressing for spinsters. Then I thought of Philip Pullman.
August 28, 2012
This Book Is Funny: Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette 1
If you ask a bookseller about a novel and they say, “It’s really funny,” you needn’t read that book. It’s bookseller-speak for “this book has little else going for it,” the literary equivalent of a good personality.
July 30, 2012
Immersive Vicarious Dining: Cooking from A Feast of Ice and Fire 4
I suppose it’s a gift of modern life that I was able to cook, host, and eat the night’s feast. It’s more likely that when book six comes out I’ll spend a good deal of time yelling at the characters to thank their chefs.
April 30, 2012
How To Introduce an Author 20
Should a beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning author have to hear the president of Northwestern’s Jewish students’ society call him Michael Sha-BONE 8 times in 2 minutes? No. Because he flew across the country to speak for 50 minutes in your overheated auditorium and you have the internet.