Arts & Life

Over the past six months, the headlines from Aleppo, Syria, have been horrifying. As the conflict between rebel forces and the government continues, the city has been overrun by tanks and artillery, and assaulted by shots, explosions and fires.

But Aleppo's present belies a much richer past. It's Syria's largest city, and one of the world's oldest continually inhabited urban areas. Over the centuries, it has served as a major crossroads for trade and commerce.

The Reuben has long suffered from two problems. Firstly, it often lacks the structural integrity to hold together as a sandwich. The second problem is that I am not constantly surrounded by a dozen of them.

The Reuben Egg Roll from Hackney's in Chicago solves the first problem, at least, stuffing corned beef, sauerkraut and swiss cheese in a crispy egg roll shell, Thousand Island on the side.

Ian: I feel like you meet this food, and you're like, "Wait, your name is Reuben?"

My favorite item from the growing mountain of Pride and Prejudice bicentennial trivia comes courtesy of an article in something called Regency World Magazine, which is going gaga over the anniversary. The article, "Albert Goes Ape for Austen," describes how a 200-pound orangutan named Albert, living in the Gdansk Zoo in Poland, insists on having 50 pages a night of Pride and Prejudice read to him at bedtime by his keeper or else he refuses to go to sleep.

Ally Carter is the author of the Gallagher Girls series and Heist Society.

Teenage girls read in packs. It's true today, and it was true when I was a teen growing up in a small town in northeast Oklahoma. Battered paperback copies swept through our ranks like wildfire, but the one I will never forget is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.