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Gregory Cowles

@GregoryCowles

Senior editor, New York Times Books desk. Reader, dad, ruminative goofball.

 Darien, CT
nytimes.com/books
Joined February 2013
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It’s been seven hours and fifteen days.
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SUNFLOWER MYSTERY: My daughter went to bed with five flowers on her shelf, and woke up with four flowers and a stem. Did she eat it in her sleep? Did a deer sneak into her room? Did it spontaneously combust??
Image from Gregory Cowles (@GregoryCowles)
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Happy Bloomsday to those who celebrate it. nytimes.com/interactive/2023…
Do You Know These Dublin Locations Mentioned in “Ulysses”? (Gift Article)

Do You Know These Dublin Locations Mentioned in “Ulysses”? (Gift Article)

Happy Bloomsday! Test your knowledge of James Joyce’s classic novel with this short quiz.

nytimes.com
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In 2018 I interviewed Martin Amis at the Texas Book Festival about his Holocaust novel “The Zone of Interest” (narrated, like “Time’s Arrow,” from the German POV), and he turned the talk memorably to Hitler’s sex life. statesman.com/story/news/201…
Martin Amis at the Texas Book Fest

Martin Amis at the Texas Book Fest

By Cyndi Hughes, via Charles Ealy

statesman.com
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The night before, seemingly very drunk, he had stumbled through his keynote speech at the festival’s gala dinner, mocking Princess Di’s death and defending elitism on the grounds that some people are inherently better than others.
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Has there ever been a hornier serious poet than the Sharon Olds of “The Wellspring”?
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Overheard on the train just now: “The thing about the King James version is the prose is so bad.” Shots fired!
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Are You There, God? It's Me, Adolf nytimes.com/2023/03/07/books…
How to Make Hitler Grow Breasts, and Other Busts (Published 2023)

How to Make Hitler Grow Breasts, and Other Busts (Published 2023)

Exploding pens and fluorescent foxes were just two of the schemes the O.S.S. tried in their quest to best Axis powers, according to a new book, “The Dirty Tricks Department.”

nytimes.com
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Speaking as an editor, sometimes there’s a very fine line between “cajole” and “cudgel”
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Wordle 613 X/6 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 Broke my streak of 118, and my 100% solve record since the NYT’s acquisition
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Radio is playing “Crocodile Rock” right now and all I can think of during the falsetto is “Elmo’s World.”
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Just started the audio version of “Jazz,” read by Toni herself, and the teeth-sucking first word (or first noise?) is a clinching argument for the glory of audiobooks.
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Text from my son
Screenshot of a text: Lots of plum icebox jokes on Mastadon the last week. That’s how you know that the Twitter users have all moved over

ALT Screenshot of a text: Lots of plum icebox jokes on Mastadon the last week. That’s how you know that the Twitter users have all moved over

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Raking leaves is the hockey equivalent of wax-on wax-off
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“Andrew Bird and Phoebe Bridgers have teamed up on a song based on an Emily Dickinson poem” is one of the less surprising sentences I’ve heard from a DJ lately
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Happy anniversary to the day I was so distracted by the Jets-Bengals game that I accidentally shaved my head
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God bless the Times Square lunatic who just called me “My dude with the great hair.”
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Considering their name, it seems fitting that you never hear Erasure anymore.
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For next prime minister I nominate Lynne Truss, who knows something about leafy greens and (depending on the comma) leaving in a hurry.
Casual flex in Ken Burns’s By the Book interview today
Image from Gregory Cowles (@GregoryCowles)
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Sad to see Dean Young and Javier Marías in the fall Threepenny Review and realize they were both alive when it went to press.
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