A little late this time …..

A glowing review by Larry McMurtry of the Bill Clinton memoir that covers the front page and two pages inside besides (“Some people don’t want Bill Clinton to have written a book that might be as good as dear, dying General Grant’s”). Not atonement for the scathing Michiko Kakutani review a few weeks ago (because it is running so late). But what is it? Very strange.

A full-page ad for the troubled Jonathan Demme remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate.” (Plus a half-page ad for “Fahrenheit 9/11.”)

A review of a new book by Franklin Foer that compares soccer and globalization.

A withering letter by the 80-year-old Ned Rorem that calls Bob Dylan “the singer charmless and rasping, Dylan the poet sophomoric and obvious, and Dylan the composer banal and unmemorable,” and derides the recent article about Dylan by Lucinda Williams as a “giggly postscript.”

Rick Perlstein, the writer of one of the best political histories of recent years, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, rips Josh Chafetz a new one for daring to compare Thomas Frank and Ann Coulter.

A review of a novel by Margaret Mazzantini says that “we expect unexpected reversals nowadays.” A review of Louise Erdrich’s new novel says that the book’s plot “feels natural and unforced, full of satisfying yet unexpected twists.” (One of the novel’s protagonists also “seems grasping yet is … unexpectedly selfless.”) So which is it?

A brand-spanking-new red Marin Bobcat Trail bike is in my living room and it’s a wonderful bike. I’ll write more and post some pics after tomorrow’s first commute with it.

It’s been amazingly temperate for at least the past week, if not the entire two weeks since summer began. There have been a few days of mid-80s temps with some high humidity, but those days have usually been followed in quick succession by days in the 70s with virtually mild humidity or (as was the case yesterday) overcast skies and bursts of rain. If this is Michigan summer, I like it. I have a feeling this is the lull before the real scorch-fest starts, though. I’m bracing myself, but that’s fairly futile. In the battle between my Anglo-Saxon/Swedish and Mexican genetic makeup, clearly the north has the upper hand in weather preference. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in Mexico City or Ciudad Juárez during the summer months, let alone Tucson or El Paso (or Norman, for that matter, which was one of my early choices under consideration for library school). Nevertheless, since there are a lot of other great qualities about the Southwest (including, among other things, the incomparable, bewitching light during the end of the afternoon and dusk in Santa Fe, which you can instantly remember even by looking at a couple of not-so-great photographs in the newspaper, as I did yesterday), I may as well start getting used to the idea of warmer weather.