What books has Hillary Clinton been "losing [her]self in"?

"I finished Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, I devoured mysteries by Louise Penny, Donna Leon, Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd... I reread old favorites like Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, the poetry of Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver. I was riveted by The Jersey Brothers and a new book of essays called The View From Flyover Country, which turned out to be especially relevant in the midst of our current health-care debate."

New York Magazine reports.

Sorry, I can't seem to get beyond New York Magazine this morning. That's where I landed after starting out in the South China Morning Post. Somehow, I only told you about the beer cans in China. I could have told you about...

1. The "pro-democracy lawmaker 'Long Hair' Leung Kwok-hung" and his fight to keep from getting his hair cut while he's in prison.

2. The tourist who fainted when informed that the jade bracelet she just broke costs 300,000 yuan (US$44,110).

3. The 80-year-old lady who threw coins into a jet engine for good luck and got the flight delayed for hours.

4. The man who was fined for cutting the roof off his car to make it into a "convertible."

5. The thing that got me to that website in the first place (because it was linked at Drudge): "Police in Shanghai on Monday closed down an unlicensed fight between two teams – one led by a tai chi master and the other by a leading mixed martial artist – just weeks after footage of a similar, very bloody, contest went viral online."

In late April, Xu [fighter and promoter of mixed martial arts] scored a convincing victory over [tai chi master] Wei, after making controversial remarks about tai chi in which he said he wanted to “expose” its lack of merit.

“[I] crack down on fake things, because they are fake. Fake things must be eliminated. No question,” he was quoted as saying...

Car choices.

A while back, spurred on by a brochure for Corvette that came in the mail, I asked whether I should buy a new car or keep my old car. I did a blogpoll that a lot of people voted in, and I wrote later commenting on how impractical it would be for me to have a Corvette, but also talking about my personal history with Chevrolet. I noted that the only cool car I'd ever had was the 1961 Chevrolet Impala convertible that my father passed on to me, and that, when the time came to buy my first car, I chose a Chevy Chevette (the lesser 'vette). Chevrolet had a place in my family's story. I neglected to tell the older and more important family story that involves Chevrolet. In the 1930s, my grandfather, George Dewey Althouse ("Pop"), was a car mechanic with enough money to start his own business, faced with the decision which make of car to work with, a decision that came down to Chevrolet and Pierce Arrow. He chose the Pierce Arrow. That is the perfect example of making what is simultaneously exactly the right and exactly the wrong choice. Pop worked on beautiful cars before he went out of business.

What car did Pop drive when I knew him? A Pontiac. And it was a Pontiac that my father bought when he handed down the Impala to me. Before the Impala, the previous two cars my father had owned were both Nashes. I particularly remember the day he brought home a new car in the mid 1950s. The old car had never been a new car to me, so it was the first time I had ever experienced the event of introducing a new car into the family. Though it was the same make as the car it replaced, the new car was much bigger and flashier, in the style of the 1950s. It was a fleshy tan color with a white roof and the spare tire mounted -- who cares if it's ridiculously inconvenient? -- in front of the trunk. I remember being fascinated by the big fold-down armrest in the middle of the back seat. Another amazing feature of this car was the gas cap, which was hidden under one of the tail lights. Of course, in those days, people didn't pump their own gas, and my father used to get a kick out of pulling into the gas station, saying "fill 'er up" to the attendant, and watching the poor man search in vain for the gas cap. The light actually pulled out and up. But the most amazing thing about the car was the hood ornament. Scroll down on this page and you'll see one that's quite close to what we had. All the kids on the block were fascinated by this hood ornament. You think a Jaguar has a cool hood ornament? You should have seen the hood ornament on our Nash.