The Oscars...fun, funner, or funnest?

Jessa Crispin at Bookslut reminded me that the man who won the Oscar for Best Screenplay used the word "funnest" in his speech. He was referring to a long trip his family took when he was a kid. I suppose—as a friend and coworker of mine pointed out—it is possible he simply reverted to his kid-self when considering the road trip, and we can let it go. Maybe.

If you are—even though the ceremony has passed—still riding a kind of Oscar-inspired giddiness, and would like to engage in some Oscar-related reading, I would like to suggest you pick up Tom Perrotta's Little Children. Few contemporary writers pull off Perrotta's trick: writing novels that are satiric, powerful, and deeply poignant.

(Perrotta is, for some reason, linked in my mind to Walter Kirn. Not sure why. Maybe it's because they are the two favorite writers of a good friend of mine. Maybe it's because they look similar. No Oscar nomination for him, this year, but you might want to follow Little Children with Kirn's Mission to America or the newly published book The Unbinding.)