The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

It started like this:

My 13-year-old daughter walked into a room where I was reading and my husband was opening a bottle of wine (which she would tell you is what we're always doing, except when we're working or yelling at her) and said, "You remember when I went to Karl and Julia's when I was in third grade and their nanny let us slide down that huge dirt hill all afternoon and you got really mad because it was so dirty and dangerous?"

"Yes," I said, without raising my head.

We all, they say, have one book in us. God knows what mine would be. How about Good Wine Needs No Bush: Political Maunderings of an Expatriate Oenophile? Or perhaps Latin Love in a Cold Climate: Memories of a Minnesota Classicist.

There are things you don't know, truths you have yet to understand. You may think what you're experiencing is just a series of events, but there is no such thing as coincidence. The world has a plan for each of us and it's all in the connections. To become englightened, simply take note.

I'm midway through a novel called We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is both the most riveting and the most grotesque book I've read in years.

A prophet is not without honor, save in her own country and among her own people. One of life’s perennial puzzles is why people in the United States do not seem to read the wonderful novels of Alison Lurie, the sharp-eyed rhapsode of Ithaca, New York.