You say "A-da" I say "Ah-da." Let's call the whole thing off.

I take my book reading rather seriously and I expect my significant other to do the same. But what if he likes Bret Easton Ellis? Or the unbearable cuteness of Special Topics in Calamity Physics? Or...shudder... A Million Little Pieces?! Contributor Marco Roth soothes my frazzled nerves in a recent article on love, literary-style, from the NYT. {ML}

“I think sometimes it’s better if books are just books. It’s part of the romantic tragedy of our age that our partners must be seen as compatible on every level...sometimes people can end up liking the same things for vastly different reasons, and they build up these whole private fantasy lives around the meaning of these supposedly shared books, only to discover, too late, that the other person had a different fantasy completely.”

It's Not You, It's Your Books [The New York Times]

Times are hard in Radioland

As two of you may have noticed, there was no show for the month of March. Blame it on the lion. Blame it on the lamb. But most of all, blame it on Spring Break, which sent our correspondents to the far corners of their bedrooms to catch up on some much needed time in the fetal position. One of us was busy, most of us were not. Please enjoy this embedded video as a token of our forgiveness, as we scurry away with our tails tucked between our legs, like unambitious dragons. {ML}

Episode #2: One Child Left Behind

The only child can't seem to get a break. Call us spoiled, call us selfish, call us unwilling to share—we've heard it before. Why "we"? Because we is me, and a number of the students in the writing program here at Columbia. But see, the only child is no longer the odd one out; in New York city over thirty percent of children grow solo. Kids are expensive, women are working longer, having them later, and only children are no longer a statement, but a necessity. This month's show includes a discussion with Daphne Uviller and Deborah Siegel, editors of the anthology One Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Woes of Growing Up Solo, a reading by Daphne from her essay about her imaginary sibling, a story by only child Kristin Vukovic on the sudden illness of her father, as well as the disembodied voices of only children in the writing program who have achieved their biological destinies in perhaps the world's loneliest (and onliest?) profession. {ML}

(Photo: This is Ondine. She lives in New York City with her parents. She enjoys boxing and interior design. Her mother dosen't allow her to go outside alone because of potential serial killers.)