Jody Amable

The neighbors turned their lights off. My dog fell sound asleep. I kept reading. And at 1:03 am, I finished. All was well.

I was waiting to finally not like a Harry Potter book, and folks, I found it. Half-Blood Prince was boring.

In this time of toy-giving, I'm reflecting on the impact one doll made on me and, I'm willing to bet, a small subset of other girls, too.

Creator of grungy, gritty rock and roll with a poet’s heart, her critically-lauded record, Beyond the Bloodhounds, tells tales of a tumultuous childhood and split geographical identity.

There are a lot of things to hate about the Olympics.

Jon Stewart, step aside. Your heir apparent has arrived.

According to the magazine, women need special help understanding sports. Cue the glorious, hilarious Twitter outrage.

Forget a cute story of wizard wonderment — the real moral of Harry Potter is that life is an endless parade of pain and turmoil where you have to watch everyone you’ve ever loved die.

So far, Deathly Hallows is, to me, about the divide between the living, the dead, and the living who have seen death. Harry and I are part of an exclusive club: Those under 30 who have experienced death. And when I say “experienced,” I don’t mean “witnessed.” I mean really, really felt it, all the way through.

I couldn’t help but assume the reason these people were telling me not to say even a word to this troll was because women aren’t supposed to fight back. We’re supposed to rise above — to “not stoop to their level,” as my mom used to say.