For the past month, my neighborhood has become an unholy shrine of giant Halloween inflatables, and there is nothing more depressing on my daily walks than seeing a pile of deflated cartoon characters lying in yards waiting to be pumped up again. This is the time of year we’re dragged from one marketing opportunity to another from October straight through to New Year's Eve. Don't get me wrong--I’m not immune. I’m weak enough to know I’m about to get caught up in the twisted dream of a Hallmark-ornament holiday. It happens every year when the initial optimism of finding the perfect gifts for everyone soon gives way to a feeding frenzy of online browsing to the despair of settling for something, anything I can put in the mail in time to arrive. I know the idea of the perfect gift is just as unrealistic as the Lifetime-movie trope of a sophisticated city girl leaving her high-powered CEO position to move to a small town to start her own jam and jelly business and then meeting the sensitive widowed he-man of her dreams dressed in a lumberjack shirt when they tangle over buying the same Frasier Fir at the lot where he is helping his adorable daughter pick out a Christmas tree before they go back to their llama farm to bake cookies for the church social. I know it, and yet there are always a few lovely days when perfectly wrapped, arriving-on-time, ecstatically received gifts dance in my head before I finally succumb to a Bernie Sanders chia pet on Amazon.

The Charleston Literary Festival runs November 5-14 with an impressive lineup of authors. You can sign up for virtual events featuring writers like Walter Isaacson, George Saunders, and Alison MacLeod ($10 each) or attend in-person venues with speakers like Lauren Groff, Bernard Cornwell, and James Ivory ($25). (In-person events require proof of vaccination or Covid tests 72 hours in advance.)

The label says “maraschino,” but Italian Luxardo Cherries don’t resemble those scary red and green fruits found in Shirley Temples. An NYC friend I call the Stanley Tucci of Manhattans says this is the only kind of cherry that should be used in that cocktail, plus they’re preservative-free and unbleached. I don’t drink Manhattans, but I can imagine using a few luxurious Luxardo cherries on a bowl of vanilla ice cream. 

I know Curb Your Enthusiasm is not to everyone’s taste, but it’s delicious to me. Larry David, the anti-Ted Lasso, taps into my inner curmudgeon (my friends might say it’s less inner and more overt), and the rest of the cast is amazing. In Season 11, Larry seems as fresh and infuriating as ever.

I was under the weather one day this week and stayed in bed reading Silverview, John Le Carré’s posthumously published novel. My expectations were moderate – after all, how could it compete with his Smiley tour de force? – but I was completely absorbed in his elegiac farewell to the convoluted world of secrets and spies. Now I plan to spend winter nights rereading the nine Smiley books. Le Carré’s elegant prose and his plots within plots like nested Russian dolls make him indisputably a master. Some reviewers disputed the ending of Silverview, but I thought it was the perfect, final word. I'm still thinking about it.