the book

“It can be spending time with your pets. It can be going to the book club that you love, but finding something where you can ground yourself in what it is to be a human being. I think I still try to translate that into my Sundays.”

The book won Daum the PEN Center USA Literary Award for creative nonfiction; more than a decade later, it still entertains.

Sadly, after the book went to press, Daum became one of many Angelenos who lost their home in Altadena’s Eaton fire.

The book reads very differently in places as a result.

Some of the pieces in the book written before this real-life catastrophe, though, suffer from the rote world-weariness of the columnist accustomed to griping to order.