Culture
When Kristen Kish, ‘Top Chef’ Host, Hits the Mute Button
Blundstone Boots
There was a point when I wore kitchen clogs, which I found uncomfortable. Then, Birkenstocks, but your heel’s exposed. Your sock’s going to get soaked, especially when you’re flooding the floors to clean at the end of the night. Blundstones are waterproof and they look good. I can go from the airplane to out in the wild, right into the kitchen and I feel like they fit all those scenarios.
Palo Santo
When I opened my restaurant in the Line hotel in Austin, it was in every single room. My wife had to tell me what it was because I was like, “What are these wooden sticks in here for?” I travel with it and when I’m in dressing rooms, studios and hotels, it just makes everything smell familiar to me, regardless of where I am.
Dental Hygiene
When I’m eating different flavors throughout the day — snacking on things or trying 15 dishes on “Top Chef” — at a certain point, my mouth starts to just feel gross. Brushing my teeth, tongue scraping and flossing help me reset a little bit.
Deep Pockets
A lot of women’s pants have little pockets that go down maybe three inches. I need them to touch my thigh. Because I’m not a purse kind of person, I like to fit my wallet, keys and mints all in my pocket if I can. I have a stylist for any clothes that I wear in public or on television. When fending for myself, I’m going to wear pants that are two times too big, comfortable and with deep pockets. Lululemon dance studio relaxed fit mid-rise cargo pants are so comfortable. Not only do they have deep pockets, they also have cargo and back pockets.
Carmex
My preference is the stick. I always carry it in my left pocket; that’s just where it lives. I don’t leave home without it and it’s stashed in random places in our house — on my desk, in the junk drawer downstairs, two in our bedroom. I buy them in bulk and take great pride in finishing them.
Peppermint Gum
My mom used to tell me, “You look like I look like a cow chewing gum.” But it keeps cadence and there’s something in the rhythm of chewing where if I’m doing a task, especially if I’m cooking for hours, it’s a place for the anxiety to go. You know, how people relax with knee bouncing.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
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