AltWeeklies Wire
What's So Funny About Cancer?new
Breast cancer memoirists all seem to agree that laughter is pretty good medicine.
Chicago Reader |
S.L. Wisenberg |
01-12-2009 |
Books
The Dread Zone: It's the Only Thing We Have to Fearnew
Despite years of religious instruction by well-meaning priests, nuns, and lay ministers, as well as my own family, on that dark night of the soul long ago, it occurred to me that as nice a story as that made, it was a bit far-fetched. I realized that not only was death absolutely real and directly applicable to me, but that death most probably meant, well, death. As in lights out. Game over. It meant you no longer were.
Charleston City Paper |
Jason A. Zwiker |
12-21-2008 |
Books
The Year in Reading About Foodnew
When I look over at the nightstand, taking quick inventory of what I've been reading over the last few months, the pile is depressingly salted with books on the death and dying of the ocean.
L.A. Weekly |
Jonathan Gold |
12-19-2008 |
Books
Winter Reading: 58 Reasons to Be Anti-socialnew
What we squeeze into Winter Reading each year is not a best-of list, exactly, though we do strive to include those books we want to recommend to friends, parents, anyone with a pair of eyes. It's more of a case for reading, for sharing the wonders of a good story.
Eugene Weekly |
Staff and freelancers |
12-16-2008 |
Books
Gift Books for Every (Perverse) Tastenew
Who knew? We asked for holiday gift books and got Japanese bondage photos, a photo-documentary about phone-sex workers, The Best of Sexology, The Annotated Dracula, a collection of Patricia Highsmith's macabre Ripley novels, and a book about "the best restaurant in the world" that is, let's face it, food porn.
Boston Phoenix |
Staff & Contributors |
12-12-2008 |
Books
Lush Lit: Five Great Wine Books for the Holidaysnew
A wise person once said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. The same could perhaps be said in regards to talking about wine, an exercise so absurd it's regularly mocked on novelty napkins. Writing about wine, however, is another thing entirely. Wine is an especially literary liquid; no other nutrient gets its own section in the bookstore.
C-Ville Weekly |
J. Tobias Beard |
12-10-2008 |
Books
Seven False Starts About the Death of David Foster Wallacenew
By now you may have heard. The most influential and innovative fiction stylist of his generation, the smartest, funniest, strangest, most endearing and (let's just say it) the greatest writer under 50 in America, killed himself at his Claremont home on Sept. 12.
Los Angeles CityBeat |
Cornel Bonca |
12-05-2008 |
Books
Two Boston Poets Use Their Art for the Good of the Tribenew
What if a poem were a social force? Boston poets Rafael Campo and Franz Wright have laid bare a live wire between poetry and isolation.
Boston Phoenix |
James Parker |
11-26-2008 |
Books
Small-Press Books: Reading for Real Peoplenew
As the unemployment rate rises and your friends find themselves out of work, why not comfort them with some small-press books this holiday season?
Tucson Weekly |
Jarret Keene |
11-20-2008 |
Books
Remembering Jim Crumley, the Last Good Detective Writernew
When the Texas-born novelist James Crumley died at age 68 on September 17, newspaper obituaries in Los Angeles, Washington, New York, and London all mentioned one of his sentences. The sentence was not the only notable string of words this fine writer composed, but devotees of his work often point to it as a landmark in modern detective fiction.
The Texas Observer |
Dick Holland |
11-19-2008 |
Books
The Terkel Rules: Translating from Speech to Prosenew
Terkel's books consist of tape-recorded conversations with mostly common people; after a brief introduction from Terkel, each text unspools almost seamlessly, with only an occasional nudge from the questioner. But here's the thing: most people don't talk that way.
Chicago Reader |
Michael Lenehan |
11-03-2008 |
Books
Graywolf Press is a Lone Wolf in Book Publishingnew
The publisher is a thousand miles from NYC but remains one of the best.
City Pages (Twin Cities) |
Ben Westhoff |
10-29-2008 |
Books
E-Books Get Some Tractionnew
I've been slamming the e-book concept for years, but I decided to give e-books another crack, this time with a loaner copy of Sony's brand new PRS-700 touch-screen Reader under my arm. I've been using it for the past couple of weeks and am impressed by its readability.
NOW Magazine |
Joseph Wilson |
10-27-2008 |
Books
Responding to 'Brocabulary' with Some Sheologismsnew
Maybe we could offset Brocabulary's chauvinism -- too ugly and tiresome to be funny -- with some good old-fashioned American equality. And so it began. The girls would propose a sexual phenomenon, and we would work together to invent a sheologism.
New York Press |
Justin Richards |
10-23-2008 |
Books
The Shelf Life of the Presidential Mindnew
Come January, whoever occupies the West Wing needs to read, and widely so, for there is no better way to come to grips with the forces transforming the Western landscape, natural and human.
The Texas Observer |
Char Miller |
10-22-2008 |
Books
