It is usual, in anthologies and collections, for female authors to represent about 15-20% of the selections. Female bylines at top publications represent 20% of the total. Female screenwriters vary between 15-19% in any given year. Why have your reviewers aimed for that offensive fraction with this list? Even assuming men are published more often than women, are they published 4 times as often? Are the reviewers misogynists who will say that women don't write "good summer reads," or are they too remiss to search out unpromoted volumes?

I have no quarrel with any of the choices in particular, but sincerely doubt they represent the spectrum available. If Salon won't review female authors, who the hell will? And if female authors don't get reviewed, how do we discover their books, and how is this pernicious percentage ever changed?

Stephanie Zacharek: "Feminism doesn't have to be the enemy of kindness, but sometimes -- alarmingly often -- it is."

Feminism is never the enemy of kindness, except in the male supremacist mindset that presumes that anything that precludes male privilege anywhere is an enemy. It's merely the assertion of women's right to equality. That's like saying that civil rights is the enemy of kindness, or gay rights, or gray rights.

Just because Camille Paglia or Ann Coulter or Anita Bryant exist does not make feminism unkind, any more than Kobe Bryant makes civil rights unkind, or Jesse Helms made gray rights unkind. Let's not even get into Ray Kohn, J. Edgar Hoover, or Richard Blackwell for gay rights....

Please, Stephanie, get a grip. Feminism made your column possible. Please don't use it to parrot the subversive patriarchal bullshit that pervades the media and breeds contempt for the movement that STILL struggles for your rights, whether it's health care, workplace equality, reproductive rights, etc. ad infinitum.

Thank you for your letter. Yes, you missed my point, but that could have been because I didn't make my point very well. My aim was to separate the practitioners from the practice. Feminism is simple: It's the audacious principle that women and men are equal. Feminism challenges the presumption that male is the standard against which all people are to be measured.

Critics of feminism will often use ad hominem [sic] arguments to trash feminism, then generalize about feminist principles; i.e., this woman looks like a bulldyke, ergo all feminists are lesbians. That feminist wishes to stay at home and raise her children, ergo feminism is hypocritical. Another feminist is a bitch, ergo feminism is unkind.

Yes, many of us have been and will be unkind, but that's irrelevant. To borrow your excellent example, the behaviour of a few hundred priests does not mean that religion is all about pedophilia (nor should it ever excuse them). Feminists can be cruel; after all, we are equal. Parents can be cruel to their children; spouses can be cruel to each other. Neither example makes parenthood or marriage inherently evil systems, all jokes aside: we are able to separate the practice from the practitioners.

A little long-winded and way off the mark for a movie review, but I appreciate your having taken the time to write.

A few WASP names I've encountered over my lifetime:

Coin - when he was born his granny thought he looked as bright as a shiny new dime

Ford - Daddy was watching a Ford commercial (in the 50's) which told him there was a Ford in his future, and turned to his pregnant wife and - tada!

Wellington Hung - no lie

Rush - no comment

A whole clutch of pre-nicknamed children in one family (Jacky, Jeanney, Peggy, Kitty, etc.)

Trey - baptized that way so folks might think he was third-generation ruling class

Esquire - tragically OD'ed before he could pass the bar

Niagara - guess where she was conceived

Tralee - ditto (but the kids at school called her "trolley car")

Sandy Beach

Rockhell - Mum loved Raquel Welch but couldn't spell

King, Duchess, & Duke - not from the same family but the names could have come from one Lab's litter

Ayeleanne - for "Eileen;" I guess Eileen was too lace-curtain Irish

...Courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Instead of your next AA meeting, Cary, walk across the hall to the Al-Anon meeting. Listen carefully as they talk about detachment. What works in Al-Anon is that family members of an alcoholic learn that there is no reasonable or healthy way to have control over another's behaviour.

LW's parents are fighting, not drinking, but the pathology is still lethal to LW. Unless there is a family fortune worth losing his mental health for, there is no reason for LW to try to become a referee between his parents. He must step out from between them. They will always see him as a wishbone, and he won't begin to heal while his parents are still using him to compete.

Sorry, folks.

Narcissistic, overweening, and patronizing.

Pathetic and supercilious theatre of the wannabe savant.

There are still some of my kids who won't "friend" me on fb. And I resent people my age who think about business contacts first and foremost.