Hollywood is adapting Joan Didion's 1977 novel A Book of Common Prayer and Christina Hendricks is set to play one of the lead characters.

Readers of Didion's recent memoir of grieving her daughter, Blue Nights, may be forgiven for remaining somewhat unclear, even upon finishing the book, as to what exactly killed Quintana Roo Dunne Michaels. Quintana, whom Didion often calls Q, was in 2005 a recently married New York-based photo editor in apparent good…

There are some writers who enter our consciousness at just the right time and remain firmly lodged for life, affecting, like a penny in a drinking fountain, the taste of everything that comes after. I am speaking primarily of the books one reads between about the ages of 17 and 20. Whether classics or assigned texts or …

The show Fairly Legal opens with the heroine, Kate, stumbling out of her houseboat and dodging repeated calls from someone labeled "The Wicked Witch of the West."

• Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are not dating.

• Lindsay Lohan is apparently no longer welcome publicity for designers. The ankle-braceleted starlet has been — horrors! — banned from borrowing clothing by most fashion houses, according to one tipster. Lohan has been clothing herself by buying things. [E!]

There are some questions that are transparently absurd even in the asking. Should you ever give up a rent-controlled apartment? is one such question. "Was Michelle Obama Jealous of Desirée Rogers?" is another.

The magazine may date from 1953, but the advice (via Modern Mechanix) is timeless. Let's learn from our farmer/model godmother, Tippi, as she juggles the responsibilities of running "from one New York studio appointment to the next" while also...raising horses.

A couple of years ago, my then-boyfriend wrote a piece of erotica about Joan Didion, which fact should go some ways towards explaining both why the relationship lasted as long as it did, and why we were ultimately incompatible:

[New York, October 26. Image via Getty]