How can any Vermonter not fall in love with a musician who sounds a bit like Fiona Apple and has a cut on her CD called "20 Years of Snow?"

Who knows, maybe it's all that snow. But I am eager to dive into Krist's exploration of an avalanche that crashed into two snowbound trains in Washington's Cascade Mountains in 1910.

Broadway has rarely done teen angst this intelligently. Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's music remind even a creature at mid-life like me of what it feels like to be young.

Quirky, affecting, and often laugh-out-loud funny, this was one of my very favorite films of 2006 - and it may be the only time I left a theater humming a song by Rick James.

I allowed 2006 to slip by without reading this National Book Award Winner in cloth. I won't let 2007 pass without getting to it now that it's out in paper.