The last thing Lexi Smart recalls is going out with friends and trying to hail a taxi. "'Remember Me" by Sophie Kinsella finds Lexi waking up in a hospital in a new year and she cannot remember anything at all about the past three years. Her amnesia is so severe she barely recognizes her mother and sister and is stunned to find out that she had an executive job and is married. She views a DVD of the wedding but it rouses no memories. Her husband is handsome and rich and agrees to let Lexi come home and have the master bedroom to herself until they become reacquainted. Lexi begins to find her way cautiously in her new life and thinks she is doing well until a handsome architect named Jon tells her they have been secret lovers and that she was about to leave her husband for him before her accident. Lexi is attracted to him but has no memory of him but she does eventually decide that she and Eric are not compatible. She leaves her job and decides to start her own company, to revive battered old friendships and maybe try her luck with Jon. ...more

December 17, 2008

The other night I tried to read part of Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, $18) while I was very sleepy, which meant that the story, which is hard enough to follow when you're fully awake and completely engaged, took on a dreamy quality that I sort of enjoyed. After all, it sometimes reads as if Pynchon wrote the thing in a similar state. ...more

August 31, 2008

About a quarter of the nation's core intelligence work force are contractors, perhaps as many as 37,000 private employees who work side-by-side with civil servants as analysts, technology specialists and mission managers, according to a report about government outsourcing by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ...more

August 28, 2008

MOVIE TIMES Movie listings are submitted by Bay area theaters. They are subject to change without notice. These listings reflect only today's movie times. ...more

July 30, 2008

In a gruesome public spectacle Friday, Taliban-linked militants executed two Afghan men accused of spying for the United States, slitting their throats and parading their severed heads before a cheering crowd. ...more

June 28, 2008

One Family's Pet Project Plant City residents may notice the pet store on Wheeler Street is starting to come to life again after being abandoned by its former owner over his sexual predator past. Now the Lewis family has set up shop in the spot, and "We're trying to bring the reputation of the pet store back up." ...more

January 27, 2008

The U.S. government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence in 2007, according to the first official disclosure under a new law implementing recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. ...more

October 31, 2007

The House will vote by year's end on legislation that would shield reporters from being forced to reveal their sources in some cases in federal court, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. ...more

October 5, 2007