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Home Comforts has a lot of answers--answers to questions I've had (no, don't keep bread in the refrigerator), questions I never thought to ask (wash your hands for the length of Yankee Doodle) and answers to questions that have been asked of me. Once on a bus through San Francisco's Chinatown, a recent immigrant took some pants out of a Gap bag, pointed to the label and asked me, "What is twill?" If only back then I'd had page 198 under my belt.
I suspect one reason Mendelson's book is so popular is that more people are spending more time at home, thanks to the digital revolution and its accompanying explosion of at-home workers. I know my own living quarters improved drastically once my living room became my office. I'm thinking of giving Home Comforts to my friend Nancy, who recently became a freelancer.
The day after she quit her job, she called me up exclaiming, "Now I know why your house looks so nice!" She had lasted only two hours as a shut-in freelancer before making haste to Bed Bath & Beyond.
Sarah Vowell's book Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World will appear in April