Now I have a question for everybody. I read a lot of entertainment literature. Should I post about it? I used to but then I felt that it was annoying everybody. So now I keep my Freida McFaddens, Lisa Gardners and John Lescroarts to myself.

Do we have any lovers of fun, entertaining, airport-type reading?

I live in rural Illinois, and I deeply love the nature here. The only nature I love more is in the North of Quebec. I especially love that my town is extremely walkable. Miles and miles of walking trails. I can walk from campus to home without ever coming in the vicinity of a car. Hell, I can walk from campus to church, although that would take hours. And maybe the word “hell” was not the best choice in this sentence.

To the reader who wrote all the sweet stuff, I want to say, thank you! This means an enormous lot, especially when you say you like my book recommendations. I live to recommend books.

Also, a great question about language teaching. I don’t do singing in the classroom, although singing is great for language learning. But I’m not only a terrible singer. I also get extremely distracted by music. I don’t do fun stuff in the classroom at all. No games, skits, videos, PowerPoints, projects. God, how I hate projects And you should see the face I make when students call me by my first name. I do a lot of traditional stuff. Conjugation drills, translation, daily quizzes. OK, I kind of suck. But students love it, so it works. I’m like this really old-fashioned professor from a C.P. Snow novel dressed like I’m on my way to a disco bar.

These are all great questions. I’m going to put this link on top of the page instead of the email because I never check the bloody email and it daunts me.

No, people, I’m not getting a tattoo. I already resolved my midlife crisis, remember? And in case it flares up again, I’m already writing the next book.

Now for the question about the best American writers of the moment. Even a couple of years ago my answer would be different but since then some of my favorite authors have gone woke, so I have to change my list.

I’d say the strongest US writer right now is Jennifer Egan. A Visit from the Goon Squad and Candyland are pretty brilliant. They are about chi-chi-frou-frou people figuring out fluidity. Very talented.

A new writer who is very gifted is Tess Gunty. I’ll write about her more soon but she’s the closest we got to a novelist of the crisis. Outstanding talent.

Bárbara Kingsolver hit it out of the park with Demon Copperhead, so I’m giving her a chance with whatever else she writes from now on. One novel isn’t a guarantee of anything but let’s be hopeful.

Jonathan Franzen is good, and Laura Lippmann is sloooowly becoming a real writer.

I feel like I’m forgetting somebody because this all sounds like extremely slim pickings. But that’s what I’ve got right now. Finding a decent American author these days is like mining for gold. I spend hours browsing shelves, reading first chapters, poring over reviews. This is hard work, folks.

Thank you for the question. It was lovely.

To the person who sent the first message: I love you, too! And I’m actually re-watching Grey’s Anatomy right now! I’m on season 10.

I miss you!!!

Please send me anonymous questions or comments here.

It’s a new app I’m trying and I want to see how it works.

Open borders aren’t as warm and fuzzy as we were led to think:

Here’s an easy rule of thumb: whenever anybody tells you that there should be no borders, know that you are dealing with either a moron or an evildoer.

I knew this couple some years ago. They were high-school sweethearts who got engaged and were planning their wedding. He was in IT, with a brilliant future. Everything was going great.

Then he decided he was a woman. He is a 6 foot 4 burly fellow of the kind that has to shave twice a day. A very deep voice, strong masculine features. After a bunch of very expensive treatments, he still looked nothing like a woman. He became majorly depressed and started to resent his fiancee because she was a tiny, very feminine woman and effortlessly had the look he wanted to achieve. She tried to be understanding, calling herself a lesbian and masculinizing her appearance with a short haircut and baggy clothing but it didn’t work.

He lost his job, became a hermit, and finally he started being physically abusive to the fiancee, so she left. It was devastating to her because he was the love of her life but it became dangerous to stay. Watching this unraveling of what was going to be a really great life was painful.

The guy was a high-achiever alpha type, so he went after this goal of becoming a woman like he’d always gone after every other goal in his life. Full speed ahead, extraordinary effort. But the goal was unachievable to begin with.

All this could have been avoided. This completely unnecessary suffering didn’t have to happen. That’s what hurts the most, how utterly unnecessary this all was.

Yes, I saw videos of a Nepalese-Cuban regiment fighting in the Donbass. The families of the Cubans say they had no idea where they were being sent and for what purpose.

N gave me a present of a signed book by a Spanish author I like just as I was eating fried potatoes (not to be confused with the evil concoction called “fries”) and egg. I experienced a huge inner conflict.

Venezuela destroyed its oil industry. We can all guess on whose orders.

Since then, it’s been getting oil from China. Well, from Russia, of course, but China delivered it. As payment for its services, China used Venezuelans as guinea pigs. The social credit passport, for example, was rolled out by the Chinese in Venezuela for a trial run.

Venezuela is also an experiment in how much lawlessness and abuse under progressivist slogans people can tolerate. For now, the answer is: an endless amount.

That’s what happens to the useless people (aka “wasted lives”) in neoliberalism. They are used for medical, social and psychological experiments.

Now a new experiment is being run in Venezuela. The question it aims to answer is whether the US will put up with a Russia-China sponsored invasion in its own hemisphere.

The question that our pouty friends love to ask (“how would the US like it if Russia placed military bases in Mexico?”) will soon require a specific, non-pouty answer.