Film Damaged

Hiatus

2010-12-29T09:31:00.003-06:00

May as well make the obvious official - this blog is on hiatus. I may or may not follow through on taking this thing to twitter. I may or may not return to book blogging in some form. Thanks to those few who followed this blog regularly and those several who found the occasional post via Google or what have you. Happy reading and happy filmgoing!

New Book Roundup: November/December 2009

2010-07-11T18:47:00.012-05:00

The following books were first reviewed in November and December of 2009, and some were as published as late as Spring 2010. I'm running an abbreviated version of my usual book roundup since I've got a lot of catching up to do. I haven't annotated every book, but they're as promising a batch as ever.

TOP PICKS

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

FICTION

NOVELS

36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett
The Farmer's Daughter by Jim Harrison
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith
Ransom by David Malouf
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson
The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi

SHORT STORIES

Best European Fiction 2010 ed. by Aleksandar Hemon
Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom

SF/FANTASY

The Secret History of Science Fiction ed. by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
Unplugged: The Web's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy: 2008 Download

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

The Dragon Book: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy ed. by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson
Older title I just learned about because of recent films based on the stories, including The Box. The stories sound better than the movies. Stephen King apparently worships this guy.

More Noteworthy Fiction:

The Infinities by John Banville
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Heresy by S. J. Parris
Lake Overturn by Vestal Mcintyre
The Parisian Prodigal by Alan Gordon
Requiem in Vienna: A Viennese Mystery by J. Sydney Jones
Paganini's Ghost: A Mystery by Paul Adam
Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Devil's Dream by Madison Smartt Bell
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Snapped by Pamela Klaffke
Something Is Out There: Stories by Richard Bausch
The God Engines by John Scalzi
Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov
Under the Dome by Stephen King

NONFICTION

New Book Roundup: September/October 2009

2010-01-28T20:58:00.019-06:00

I'm running this quite late, but I've found some fun, intriguing titles that escaped the notice of the hype machine, which operates pretty haphazardly - the spotlight flashes on a book or two per week and then moves on, leaving plenty of excellent books behind. So have a skim, see if anything strikes your fancy. These books were generally reviewed in September and October, many published in November and December.

TOP PICKS

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Booker winner, a revisionist historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell, has quickly developed a reputation for being a difficult, demanding, but absorbing and excellent read.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
A cautionary look at where technology is taking us, and for once the tech critic can't be dismissed as a Luddite. The critical knives are out online for this author, of course.

In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt
Publishers Weekly says the collection "demands intelligence and rewards the reader with Borgesian riches"; Library Journal compares the writer to Conrad, Hawthorne, and Melville and points out that this is the life's work of a writer who's work has mostly been spotted only in the literary journals.

FICTION

NOVELS
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell
Can it be true? Has Powell truly written a novel composed only of questions? Is it any wonder it become a minor sensation among the lit bloggers?

Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord
Another prep school novel? I know, I know. But this sounds excellent, and the reviews have been excellent.

How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
The story of four intertwined characters, all touched by art, in the Booker finalist's latest.

Family Album by Penelope Lively
Another set of strong reviews for Lively - no surprise there.

Running: A Novel by Jean Echenoz
New novel from the author of the excellent (and recommended) minimalist novel Ravel.

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
Spectacular reviews for this postmodern autobiographical novel, yet I have the impression you'll get more from it if you're familiar with the Nobel-winner's earlier work.

La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith
I've never read Smith, but reading about this one made me think I'd enjoy this series. (I'm sure the Ladies No. 1 Detective series is also charming.)

Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay
I'm become completely addicted to the darkly brilliant Showtime series based on and inspired by Lindsay's first Dexter novel, and I'm interested to see where he took the character versus where the tv show takes him.

The Humbling by Philip Roth
Sounds interesting, but I'm hoping Roth sets aside these novella-length projects and tries something longer and more daring next.

Running Away by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Tsk, tsk. Very few reviews outside of some high-lit blogs for this novel by an important French writer.

The Chill by Romano Bilenchi
Translation of a dark, stylish coming of age story from the rarely translated Italian writer Romano Bilenchi.

Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell, Vol. 3 by Javier Marias
Latest from the popular Spanish author, one of the true stars of the international literary scene.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
A postmodern re-imagining of The Odyssey by a clever young writer. Sounds fun.

Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist
Don't know anything about this translation, but if you haven't read Kleist, you really must.

SHORT STORIES
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Apparently Russian author Petrushevskaya is a celebrated modern-day Grimm, and reviewers caution that these are very dark tales.

Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories by Thomas Lynch
Reviews are mixed-to-positive so far for Lynch's (The Undertaking), though Library Journal's critic called the title story a masterpiece.

Fun with Problems by Robert Stone
I'm not really familiar with Stone, but Kirkus calls him a 'great American novelist' and reviews have been strong for this 'grim' collection.

SF/FANTASY
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
One of the most acclaimed SF novels of the year, Bacigalupi's novel has logically been compared to Ian McDonald's work because its dystopian vision is set in territory fresher than the overworked America and Europe - in this case, Thailand.

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
I read this incredible testimonial back in September and have so far been unable to get my hands on the book.

Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 ed. by Kevin Brockmeier and Matthew Cheney
Coverage of this collection has been sparse but enthusiastic. Includes work by Stephen King, Peter S. Beagle and other, including, John Kessel's "'Pride and Prometheus,' a mash-up uniting Pride and Prejudice's plain sister, Mary Bennet, and Victor Frankenstein."

American Fantastic Tales ed. by Peter Straub
The new two-volume anthology from the Library of America seems like an instant classic, covering Poe to the Pulps, and the 1940s to the present. It seems to be heavy on the literary side of American genre fiction, but the choices are intriguing.

In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield
One of the best things about J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, something she doesn't get enough credit for, is the way the series renewed popular interest in so many mythologies. Whitfield's story of an alternate Earth in which merpeople rule the world jointly with 'landsmen,' and royal power struggles are affected, seems less likely to have been created or published without Rowling.

The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
A 'dazzling' alternate history / steam-punk novel with a sense of humor. Characters named Miranda and Prospero figure into the plot, incidentally.

Mercury Station: A Transit by Mark von Schlegell
Avant-garde sci-fi, strange plot twists, word-play - this sounds really weird. Cool!

More Noteworthy Fiction:
The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume 1: The Variable Man and Other Stories
Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn by Matthew Hughes
Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro
Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes by Will Self
The Book of Fathers by Miklos Vamos
The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture by David Hajdu
Hajdu (The Ten-Cent Plague) takes on musicians as varied as Harry Partch, the White Stripes and Billy Eckstein, as well as artists like Marjane Satrapi and Will Eisner. Sounds interesting.

LITERATURE
Talking about Detective Fiction by
A writing guide by a master of the mystery genre, a truly exciting publishing event.

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
Smith's essays on literature that I've come across in magazines have been unusually fine, and reviews indicate she expounds on diverse subjects just as well, including some thoughtful film commentary. I'm looking forward to this one.

Concerning E. M. Forster by Frank Kermode
Kermode takes on Forster's Aspects of the Novel for starters in this series of essays. Read Edmund White's review at the NYTBR.

HISTORY
Young Nelsons: Boy sailors during the Napoleonic Wars by Douglas Ronald
Seems like a pretty strange little topic for a book, and yet it does sound interesting, bringing to mind old black and white pirate movies and the sneaking suspicion in the audience that the reality was probably a lot uglier.

POLITICS
The Left at War by Michael Berube
The author's writings about the "Manichean" left (Chomsky, etc.) sound particularly interesting.

MISC.
When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish: And Other Speculations about This and That by Martin Gardner
Gardner sounds extremely cool. Apparently he's known for his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, and this book (he's written many many books) is a hodgepodge of pieces. PW: "Gardner at his best."

The Whatchamacallit: Those Everyday Objects You Just Can't Name by Danny Danziger, Mark Mccrum
Promises to teach us the names for the odds and ends that surround is in humble obscurity.

Dear Undercover Economist: Priceless Advice on Money, Work, Sex, Kids, and Life's Other Challenges by Tim Harford
New book from the popular economist who writes for the educated layman.

Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans by Ethan Brown
Perhaps a good companion to Dave Eggers's Zeitoun?

How Philosophy Can Save Your Life: 10 Ideas That Matter Most by Marietta McCarty
A kind of applied, even self-help approach to philosophy that might appeal to fans of Alain de Botton.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema by Emilie Bickerton
The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe
Louisa May Alcott : The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen
Samuel Johnson: A Life by David Nokes
Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk by Robyn Okrant
1688: The First Modern Revolution by Steve Pincus
How They See Us: Meditations on America ed. by James Atlas
Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan by Piers Dudgeon
Legacy of Susan Sontag by Barbara Ching
China : A History by John Keay
Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns

Of Gay Interest:

The Sower by Kemble Scott
In what sounds like a clever variation on the AIDS novel, Scott's hero Bill Soileau discovers he's contracted "a manmade supervirus that appears to be a cure for all diseases...., and the only way to pass the miracle cure onto others is through sex."

Impossible Princess by Kevin Killian
The publisher blurb identifies Killian as "[a] member of the 'new narrative' circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker," which means little to me except that he's in interesting company. The stories in the collection sound interesting.

The Brutal Telling: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Penny Louise
Some gay supporting characters in this well-reviewed mainstream mystery novel.
Also Noteworthy:
Edwin and John : A Southern Gay Couple's Half Century Journey Together by James T. Sears
Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by Jose Munoz
The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman
Trash by Jon Davies
Law of Desire by Jose Quiroga
Gods & Monsters by Noah Tsika

Of Chicago Interest:

Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus
Poker is as hot as ever, apparently, and Evanston author McManus is back to deepen everyone's love of the game.

A Cadger's Curse: A D. D. McGil Literati Mystery by Diane Gilbert Madsen
The start of a new cozy mystery series set in Chicago

Graphic Work:

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly
A treasure-trove of goodies for the kiddies from comics of the 30s through the 60s. This sounds fantastic.

Prison Pit by Johnny Ryan
Ryan's work is twisted, juvenile and obscene - and I always enjoy it. Check it out.

The Recently Deflowered Girl: The Right Thing to Say on Every Dubious Occasion by Hyacinthe Phypps, with illustrations by Edward Gorey
Not sure where I heard about this silly, demented little novelty.

Also Noteworthy:
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna
All and Sundry : Uncollected Work 2004-2009 by Paul Hornschemeier
The Best of Punch Cartoons: 2,000 Humour Classics by Helen Walasek

New Book Roundup: July/August 2009

2009-11-02T23:12:00.012-06:00

The latest and greatest, highlights from the July and August reviews, and most of these books are on the new arrivals shelves, both physical and virtual.

TOP PICKS

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
His latest has been tagged as 'Pynchon-lite' by several reviews, but perhaps partly for that very reason it's proven to be a hit. Interestingly, it's yet another example of an esteemed literary writer (like Chabon and Denis Johnson) to take up Chandleresque noir.

Love and Summer by William Trevor
Trevor is an unusually consistent writer, with a reputation as strong as Alice Munro's, and his latest novel has some of the best reviews of any book this year.

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
A stunning graphic memoir, easily read in an hour or two and pretty much deserving of all of the hype it's getting.

FICTION

NOVELS
The Coral Thief by Rebecca Stott
A page-turning historical set in post-Revolutionary France that weaves in some philosophy and science - Stott's already exhausted me with her brilliance and I haven't even picked up the book yet.

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
If you've seen this giant book in stores, you don't exactly need a critic to tell you it was probably overwritten. Still, Byatt's family saga set during the transition from Victorian to modern times (WWI) shouldn't be dismissed. She's an amazing writer.

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Doctorow take up the story of the Collyer Brothers in his slim latest. In a way, this sounds like a natural companion to the several recent attempts to reimagine the lives of the women of Grey Gardens.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
She's not my cup of tea, but Moore is one of the most popular and respected literary authors in the U.S., and it's been quite a while since she's published.

The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
Savage is building a great reputation rather low on the radar.

As God Commands by Niccolo Ammaniti
Ammaniti is that rarest of the writing species - a European writer with an American following. He penned I'm Not Scared, which was turned into a gripping movie. The latest sounds excellent.

Invisible by Paul Auster
Auster's getting some of the best reviews he's received in a long time for his latest.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Set in the same universe as Oryx and Crake (I've got some catching up to do) but not exactly a sequel. So feel free to dive right in. My impression, however, is that the consensus so far is that the previous book is a bit better.

No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon
Sometimes I just want to turn all of my reading decisions over to the people at NYRB. They could probably get me a better batting average of good reads than I could achieve myself.

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile by Gyles Brandreth
All these classic writers doubled as detectives, it seems, but Wilde was no doubt the most stylish. (This is his third adventure in the series.)

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano
Strangely, the latest Bolano translation to be published has gotten very little media attention, but the few critics writing about it are giving it an unequivocal thumbs-up.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias
This mystery with a classical music backdrop has gotten nothing but good reviews so far - sounds like a diverting light read.

SHORT STORIES
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
I've yet to be disappointed by Munro, whose work miraculously always lives up to the praise it receives.

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
I was frustrated yet impressed by Never Let Me Go, and I'm curious to see what he can do with the short form.

Call Me Ahab by Anne Finger
I'd like to see some more reviews for this story collection. Any takers?

SF/FANTASY
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Steampunk? Zombies? An alternative 1880s America? It's really not right to get me this excited - I could have coronary or something.

Under the Dome by Stephen King
Has King been reading Borges or something?

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt
Western by Christine Montalbetti
Brecht at Night by Mati Unt
Hell by Robert Olen Butler
For Grace Received by Valeria Parrella
Where I Must Go by Angela Jackson
Poisonville by Massimo Carlotto

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein
The excellent Dickstein's new book could not be more timely - it seems all I've read about this year was the Great Depression. But even if our economy wasn't tattered, I'd still be interested in this for the discussion of 30s film and literature.

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
Teachout is one of the most insightful, generous critics working today, so I'd be interested in anything he chose to write a book about. But Louis Armstrong? Doubly interested.

Jazz by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins
This new history of jazz is said to be informative enough to serve as a textbook but also interesting enough to fascinate serious fans.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small by John Cook with Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan
Merge! Home of so much good music! I read somewhere that those are Laura's boots on the cover.

Nina Simone: The Biography by David Brun-Lambert
Seems like Simone's story would be an interesting one; she's certainly a fascinating musician.

LITERATURE
A New Literary History of America ed. by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors
This sounds a little weird but interesting.

The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder by Stephen Elliott
Elliott sure can write, but his work is probably way too dark for the mainstream. Kirkus takes a brave stab at summarizing this memoir/meditation: "His themes-seemingly crime, murder, drugs and sadomasochistic sex-actually encapsulate the nature of truth, self, love and memory, and the limits of art to get at them all."

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer by Jeff VanderMeer
Sounds like a fresh and original resource for writers, one that addresses a wide array of needs.

Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems by Kim Addonizio
Usually when reviews single out highlights from books of poetry I think, oh boy, that's supposed to make me want to read this? But Library Journal's quotes actually made me want to check this book out. "I have been one acquainted with the spatula," for example.

HISTORY
Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz
I read an absolutely fascinating interview with this author, and it made me feel as if I finally understood so many things I never understood before - like what the big deal was about The Secret (promoted by Oprah) or the Dan Brown books. Not that I'm planning to read those books.

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
You don't hear much in popular culture about the early years of our nation, but what an important and interesting time it must have been. There is such an abundant wealth of historical writing every year, and I read so little of it. I should hang my head in shame, verily.

SCIENCE/NATURE/TECHNOLOGY
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
There's been a bumper crop of books on evolution this year due to the Darwin Bicentennial and the continuing arguments about God and Creationism, but this book would seem to claim a place near the top of the heap.

A Year on the Wing: Four Seasons in a Life with Birds by Tim Dee
Publishers Weekly: "Distilled from one year of introspective observation, 40 years of attentive bird watching and a pantheon of literary references, this fiercely poetic memoir expresses a magical love of nature's migratory feathered marvels."

Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology by Mark V. Barrow, Jr.
I guess I was surprised to hear that there's been concern about extinctions for much longer than I had realized. Sounds like the book's real draw are the stories of the individual naturalists and conservationists who fought to raise our awareness of the issue.

The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes by Idan Ben-Barak
A "wonderfully informative and entertaining" look at microbes, those asexual freaks of nature that help us all digest our food and clean up our waste. Still, I'm glad they are invisible. Blech.

MISC.

The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman
You've heard of the slow food movement, right? Freeman would like to inspire a slow communication movement. Good. Idea.

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (And Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
I keep meaning to read a book by these guys. They sound fun.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
Said to be the best account from the ground of the war in Iraq.

Cranioklepty by Colin Dickey
Skull collecting? Wow, and I thought Gawker was disresepctful towards the famous.

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich's most controversial book in a while, as probably could have been predicted. It's one thing to argue that the working poor get the shaft; but Americans will put up much more resistance to the idea that positive thinking isn't the solution to every problem. Good luck, Barbara. You are one brave soul!

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter A. Carlin
All Hopped Up and Ready to Go : Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 by Tony Fletcher
Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told by Kenneth Turan, Joseph Papp
Empire of Illusion : The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges
Book Shopper: A Life in Review by Murray Browne
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A. J. Jacobs
American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Eliot
Thelonious Monk : The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D. G. Kelley
Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth
How to Live Like an Italian: A User's Guide to La Dolce Vita by Annalisa Coppolaro
The Death of Conservatism by Sam Tanenhaus
Obamanos!: The Rise of a New Political Era by Hendrik Hertzberg
Listen Up, Mr. President : Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do by Helen Thomas, Craig Crawford
My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson by Jessica DuLong
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 ed. by Elizabeth Kolbert, Tim Folger
In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic by Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld
Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) by Matt Young and Paul K. Strode
Parallel Play: Life as an Outsider by Tim Page

Of Gay Interest:

The Gigolo Murder (Turkish Delight Series) by Mehmet Murat Somer
I don't remember hearing about the 1st in this mystery series, but the second sounds worth reading for the novelty of the Istanbul setting alone, let alone the story: "A Turkish drag queen turns sleuth to win the heart of a dreamy lawyer."

Sugarless by James Magruder
In the 70s, in a Chicago suburb, a high school sophomore struggling with his sexuality discovers possible salvation in his rival forensics team's coach.

Also Noteworthy:
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s by Edmund White
I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey by Paul Rudnick

Of Chicago Interest:

Chicago: A Biography by Dominic A. Pacyga
One of the more exciting books about Chicago to come along in a while. It feels in the hand a bit too much like a textbook, but it looks fascinating nonetheless.

Graphic Work:

Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak
Sikoryak uses classic comics characters like Blondie & Dagwood, Batman and Little Lulu to rework classic stories from the Bible to Hawthorne. Does that not make you want to abandon your computer and rush to the nearest comics shop now?

Also Noteworthy:
Moomin Book Four: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip by Tove Jansson
Prince Valiant: 1937-1938, Vol. 1 by Hal Foster

New Book Roundup: May/June 2009

2009-10-10T14:25:00.013-05:00

TOP PICKS

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
The "story" is about a middle aged anthologist (closely resembling Baker) struggling to finish his poetry anthology and win back the woman who's fed up with his inability to finish. But the real juice of the book, believe it or not, is the fun writing about poetry.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
This look at the leading lights of the Romantic Era and the surprising connections between its scientists and artists seems to be one of the bigger breakthrough works of nonfiction this year. Sounds like a great read.

FICTION

NOVELS
Persona Non Grata by Ruth Downie
Third installment in the Gaius Petreius Ruso series, a detective series set in ancient Roman times.

Ghosts by Cesar Aira
Translated by Chris Andrews, who has translated much of Bolano's work, this short novel by the prolific (but still relatively unknown in the U.S.) author sounds like a strange work of art. I've been trying to read more international (not to mention noncommercial) fiction, so I may give this a try.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Follow-up from the acclaimed author or The Shadow of the Wind. The Catalan's latest has been compared to Poe and Borges but also Perez-Reverte and King

Blame by Michelle Huneven
Some interesting reviews for this page-turner about the effects of an accident on several lives. I can attest that the first chapter was snappy and enjoyable.

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Reviewed as a smart but mass-friendly novel somewhat in the vein of Tom Perrotta. A trusted friend enjoyed this.

Something Missing by Matthew Dicks
An OCD criminal starts by stealing things no one would ever miss - then hits on the idea of improving the lives of his victims. This sounds absolutely charming.

Rider on the White Horse by Theodor Storm
Michael Dirda and The New Yorker both describe this novella, being republished with short fiction by the New York Review of Books, as a great classic. Sounds excellent!

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy
This coming of age novel is the ecstatically reviewed debut of an Irish writer who's worked for Rolling Stone among other magazines.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias
What could be called a murder mystery, with a classical music backdrop. It all starts with the theft of a priceless Stradivarius. Sounds fun.

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld
Intriguing reviews of this Australian novel of twin narratives that concern a Korean War-era father and his son. Australian-set fiction gets little attention here (aside from big names like Peter Carey), so if you want to find out more, don't look to the critics.

Wanting by Richard Flanagan
Several novels this year were about Charles Dickens, but it seems on closer inspection of reviews that this is hardly a fictionalized biography of Boz. Dickens, in fact, is not the primary focus of this book, which tells the story of a prominent Australian Victorian couple and their adoption of an Aboriginal girl.

SHORT STORIES
It's Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun
One of the best reviewed literary collections of the year.

SF/FANTASY
Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey
Latest thriller in a supernatural series compared to Jim Butcher's work - excellent reviews.

Federations ed. by John Joseph Adams
Anthology of SF work set in universes that have Federations of worlds (in the vein of Star Trek, Dune, and Star Wars). Sounds fun.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Big-time attention for this fantasy for adults, written by a Time magazine writer. Sounds good, though as someone who was never a Narnia fan, I'm a little concerned this was really written for other readers.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Ice Land by Betsy Tobin
Juan the Landless by Juan Goytisolo
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson
Monster's Notes by Laurie Sheck
Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Tongue by Kyung-Ran Jo
Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun
All the Living by C. E. Morgan
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson by Frances Brent
Story of a reknowned cellist who survived the Holocaust and went on to be a member of the Dallas Symphony.

Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives ed. by Peter Terzian
They've rounded up a surprisingly literary bunch to write about their favorite albums. I'm quite curious about this gang's choices.

Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke by Grant Hayter-Menzies
This book doesn't seem to be getting the attention and interest it deserves. From what I've seen of her work and heard of her life, there should be an audience out there for this book.

Singin' in the Rain: The Making of an American Masterpiece by Earl J. Hess
My favorite musical gets a book devoted to it.

LITERATURE
Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins
The inimitable Mr. Collins takes on the history of the world's most coveted collectible book.

A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest by Hobson Woodward
Who doesn't love a good shipwreck tale? Apparently Shakespeare did.

The Lost Origins of the Essay ed. by John D'Agata
D'Agata aims to challenge the conventional understanding of what an 'essay' is with this collection that spans many centuries of prose.

The Years of Talking Dangerously by Geoff Nunberg
From this distance I can't quite make out his politics, but Nunberg's essays on language have been compared to Safire. Scanning the TOC online, he also seems to beg comparison to Orwell in his concerns.

The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control by Ted Striphas
Seems to be an essential read for those who care about books and reading.

Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue by William Logan
Apparently Logan has a reputation for being a great contemporary poetry critic, one who pulls no punches. This sounds like an interesting companion to Nicholson Baker's new novel.

The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes by Joan Silber
One of the latest in this noteworthy recent series of studies on specific topics related to the craft of writing. (The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song by Ellen Bryant Voigt is another.)

HISTORY
Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era by Caroline Moorehead
Rave reviews for this book about a woman who saw the storming of Versailles and the battle of Waterloo - and kept a diary through it all.

Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson
Apparently, Newton spent part of his illustrious career hunting counterfeiters for the Mint. Ooh, a detective story!

World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone
Still not even a full century behind us, yet this important conflict is overshadowed in our culture by the second World War. Here's a chance to understand the previous war better.

The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped by Paul Strathern
A look at the mutual impact that these three figures had on one another, and those are three pretty big, still recognizable names to have interacted so long ago.

1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan
Watch enough movies from this time (or read enough books) and you should be well-primed for Kaplan's thesis that the changes we associate with the 60s actually began a bit earlier.

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome by Anthony Everitt
Those Roman emperors are timeless subjects, and Everitt has a good track record of writing about them.

Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000 by Chris Wickham
A tourguide shining a light in those historical caverns, The Dark Ages.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day by Diane Ackerman
Ackerman takes her siganture approach, combining science and the arts, to consider the Dawn. Nature lovers rejoice.

Darwin's Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution by Iain McCalman
Story of Darwin and some of the explorers who put his theories to the test. Another strong popular science history this year.

Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press by Eric Boehlert
Few topics seem more important these days than the fate of journalism in the internet age, at least as concerns us as a society. This book sounds like an important part of that conversation.

Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg
A history and defense of, well, what I'm doing write now - blogging.

MISC.
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell
The evidence increasingly seems to show that our obsession with paying less is - guess what? - destructive.

An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town by David Farley
A history of the (alleged) foreskin of Jesus. One of the notable examples of religion's eccentricities.

On Kindness by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
On Bullshit, a similarly sized work of contemporary philosophy, was a recent success. This new (unrelated, I think) book similarly takes on a focused subject, though with a less eyegrabbing title.

The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers
Haven't actually seen this book yet (how ironic), but it seems to be a fun look at the history of the unicorn in our culture.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Knickerbocker: The Myth behind New York by Elizabeth L. Bradley
Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City by Anthony Flint
Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara
Meeting Jimmie Rodgers : How America's Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century by Barry Mazor
Alphabet by Ronald Silliman
The Full Body Project: Photographs by Leonard Nimoy
The Perils of Obamamania by Adolph Reed
Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon
Sufficiency of the Actual by Kevin Stein
A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities by Alberto Angela

Of Chicago Interest:

How to Hold a Woman: A Novel in Stories by Billy Lombardo
Lombardo has a local reputation for being an excellent writer as well as a great guy.

Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 by Chad Heap
Apparently focuses primarily on New York and Chicago. The New Yorker's review made it sound very interesting.

Also Noteworthy:
Ugly Laws: Disability in Public by Susan Schweik
Chicago is actually only one of the cities studied in this book, but apparently Chicago's old code is most-often quoted when the topic arises.

Of Gay Interest:

Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale
Aimed at a mainstream (not a gay) audience, this series apparently includes a gay character. Sounds like ass-kickin' fun.

The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed by Judy Shepard
Matthew's mother has become a respected leader and activist for change. Reviewers have said her inspirational mission shines through in this book.

Also Noteworthy:
Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway
Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict by Joshua Lyon
Mental: Funny in the Head by Eddie Sarfaty
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them ed. by Michael Montlack
God Says No by James Hannaham

Graphic Work:

Wondermark: Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death by David Malki
Another compilation of one of the very funniest, wittiest comics being written today.

Low Moon by Jason
A large new collection from the hotshot alternative comics artist from Norway.

Also Noteworthy:
Beasts!: Book One and Beasts!: Book Two ed. by Jacob Covey
Bollywood Posters by Jeremy Pinto, Sheena Sippy
Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics by Denis Kitchen, Paul Buhle

New Book Roundup: March/April 2009

2009-07-30T22:28:00.000-05:00

As I belatedly post this latest roundup of cool new books, the Fall season is shaping up to be something special. So get caught up on your reading. There's lots of good stuff coming.

TOP PICKS

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears
A new "vast historical mystery" from the acclaimed author of An Instance of the Fingerpost and Dream of Scipio. I must say I'm getting seriously interested in this author.

The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes ed. by Michael Sims
The author of Adam's Navel compiles a juicy anthology of caper stories from the Victorian/Edwardian eras. Drool!

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton
De Botton turns his attention to work, and I for one am eager to see what he has to say.

Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage
The excellent Standage turns his attention to history with a focus on the relationship between food and human culture.

FICTION

NOVELS
Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
Followup from the author of the acclaimed bestseller Carter Beats the Devil, this big novel centers on (though not exclusively) Charlie Chaplin beginning in 1916. Critical reaction has been great but online reader reactions have been more mixed so far - though it's early.

The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
The Czech writer's first novel to be translated into English is "a gorgeous matryoshka doll of unreason, enigma and nonsense - truly weird and compelling" (Publisher's Weekly).

Etta by Gerald Kolpan
Novel of Etta Place, lover of the Sundance Kid and member of the Wild Bunch.

Martyr by Rory Clements
Meet John Shakespeare, detective. Oh, and elder brother of William. An Elizabethan thriller - sounds fun.

Op Oloop by Juan Filloy
Not only is literature in translation being published less in the U.S., it's being reviewed less, so it's hard to say if there's a critical consensus on this work, but it certainly seems worth checking out.

When to Go into the Water by Lawrence Sutin
PW enjoyed this fictional biography - any other reviewers going to take it on?

I Am Not Sidney Poitier by
HipsterLit alert. Maybe. At least I suspect. But I was surprised to read: "the protagonist's name - literally, 'Not Sidney Poitier' - inspires all sorts of Abbott and Costello 'Who's on First?' riffing. ('Knot, with a k?'... 'Not with a k'... 'That's what I said'..."

Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson
A fun new twist on the Holmes phenomenon - playing off the legends that people used to write letters to Baker street asking for the help of the great detective, believing Watson's subject to be real.

Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life by Edna O'Brien
It does seem like Byron's life is a natural subject for a novel.

Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
I recently saw Le Plaisir, Max Ophuls's setting of three Maupassant stories, which has reminded me how great a storyteller he was - and how little I've read by him.

Woodsburner by John Pipkin
Glowing reviews for this historical fiction centered on the forest fire started by Thoreau before his famous stay at Walden Pond.

SHORT STORIES
My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike
I agree with Julian Barnes, whose reaction to Updike's death partly consisted of the reaction, "But I thought we had him for another ten years." I've never read his novels, but I've always enjoyed the occasional Updike story - in fact, they played a role in turning me into a fan of short stories and literary fiction. So I'm looking forward to this final collection of new work.

The Maples Stories by John Updike
Meanwhile, this new collection of Updike's celebrated Maple stories sounds even more promising.

Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson
Another critical hit for Jean Thompson - an American Alice Munro?

Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
New collection from the author of Booker-winner The White Tiger.

Drift: Stories from Newport Beach by Victoria Patterson
Not much coverage for this collection so far, but the one review I've seen was excellent. Nice cover.

SF/FANTASY
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
Postapocalyptic fiction from an acclaimed SF writer. The book's universe has been compared to steampunk for its 19th Century style technology, but the writing sounds fresh enough to break free from that subgenre.

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro
I read that this story was originally conceived of as a tv show - vampire mania continues in publishing.

Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S. G. Browne
A Shaun of the Dead-style zombie novel that's been getting good reviews but hasn't yet reached the popular audience it seems destined for, as far as I can tell, though it seems just a matter of time.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Normance by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
Pop Apocalypse: A Possible Satire by Lee Konstantinou
Enemies and Allies by Kevin J. Anderson
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
Far North by Marcel Theroux
Transit by Bernard Share
The Brothers Boswell by Philip Baruth
A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo
Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
Herzog is such an interesting thinker as well as director, this is bound to be of interest.

Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy
No quickie cash-in on Newman's death, this book was begun well before the death of one of Hollywood's biggest and noblest stars.

Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner
Music lovers have been talking about this book since the moment it dropped, one of the key books of the year for its subject area.

Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited by Molly Haskell
Sounds like a great match of critic and subject.

Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel by Nick Dawson
I've gotten interested in Ashby's films, after seeing Harold and Maude again and then the excellent The Last Detail, so this book comes along at the perfect time.

Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture by Kaya Oakes
The "indie" ideal has been a crucial part of my generation's culture, and I'd like to read a book that considers this problematic idea carefully.

Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture ed. by Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinskyby
I'd never heard of Stay Free magazine before (say, their blog looks pretty cool), but this anthology of their writings sounds interesting.

LITERATURE
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language by Arika Okrent
How could anyone resist a title or a topic like this?

Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry by Stephen Burt
It sometimes feels like poetry readers are an endangered species, and the culture of poetry seems remote enough that it's hard to know what to read even if you wanted to give it a try. Is that how you feel? This book's for you.

HISTORY
American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America by Edmund S. Morgan
Collection of essays on American history from a venerable Pulitzer-winning historian.

How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy
The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome by Christopher Kelly
The story of Rome never loses its appeal, as far as I can tell.

The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown
Top-notch reviews of this new history of communism.

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano
Not sure how to classify this latest by the celebrated Uruguayan.

Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths by Robin Waterfield
A historical investigation that promises to change discussions of Socrates forever.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane
Evolution continues to be a hot topic of popular science writing. In fact, it seems you could pile your nightstand with great reads on the topic.

Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife Forensics Lab Is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species by Laurel A. Neme
A clever angle on popular science writing. I hope this book reaches a large audience.

MISC.
Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness by Willard Spiegelman
The seven are apparently reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming and writing. Spiegelman and I could clearly be friends. (Well, okay, except for maybe the swimming part.)

How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Sharon Moalem
Who could resist picking this up?

The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten
One of the more interesting true crime stories I've read about in a while, and it seems like a catchy time for these depressed economic times.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Crawford, Matthew B
A young coworker quit a few years ago to work in construction and I've often wondered if it would be a more satisfying job than working a deskjob. Clearly, I'm not the only one who considers the idea of working with your hands enticing.

Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World by Dominique Moisi
An acclaimed new treatment of globalization that has been called an "astonishingly creative response to Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations."

Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
Anderson's well-managed plagiarism controversy seems to have hurt interest in this book, obviously meant to provoke conversations. And high profile attacks from the 'MSM' certainly haven't helped. Anderson's clearly touched a nerve in this stressful economy, and his critics have brought up plenty of fair points.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Art Thief, Rock-and-Roller, and Prodigal Son by Myles J. Connor, Jenny Siler
The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Gian Piero Brunetta
Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers by John Sutherland
The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha
The Lincoln Poems by Dan Guillory
God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times by Robert H. Phelps
Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits by Jack Murnighan
See Jack: Poems by Russell Edson
Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count by Jill Jonnes
Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook by Don Herron
Dillinger's Wild Ride : The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One by Elliot J. Gorn
A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by Paul Lockhart
Imperial by William T. Vollmann
Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies by Michael Deeley

Of Gay Interest:

Selected Poems by Thom Gunn, ed. by August Kleinzahler
Someone recently wrote that Gunn's work improved over time, and this slim collection has garnered a fair amount of notice. One of the major events in poetry publishing this year.

C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems trans. by Daniel Mendelsohn
C. P. Cavafy: The Unfinished Poems trans. by Daniel Mendelsohn
These new translations comprise one of the bigger literary events of the year so far.

The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World by James Davidson
A major new look at homosexuality in the ancient Greek world.

Show That Smells by Derek McCormack
The latest from Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series carries a blurb from filmmaker/fellow Canadian Guy Maddin.

Also Noteworthy:
Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema by Steven Paul Davies

Of Chicago Interest:

Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing by Steven J. Zipperstein
Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill

Graphic Work:

Britten and Brülightly by Hannah Berry
Noirish murder mystery set in 1940s London, arrives with acclaim from the U.K.

Tijuana Bibles: America's Forgotten Comic Strips by Michael Dowers
Well, apparently not completely forgotten.

Also Noteworthy:
Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation by Harvey Pekar, Paul Buhle
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 3: Century #1: 1910 by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill

New Book Roundup: January/February 2009

2009-03-29T21:08:00.001-05:00

Zombies, Shakespeare, splinters of the true cross...a strange group of books, I'm as pleased as ever to report.

TOP PICKS

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
I was impressed by Toibin's collection of stories, Mothers and Sons, but I wasn't so interested in The Master, his novel about Henry James. His new novel sounds more appealing to me, and it's getting unanimous praise so far.

The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell
PW: "Veteran espionage novelist Littell trades cold war spies for interwar Russian poets in his wonderful new novel." Kirkus: "Firmly in the tradition of Orwell, Kafka and Koestler - and equally harrowing."

Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead by Peter Manseau
Tour the nutty world of sacred relics. I rather liked PW's take: "You have to love a book with sentences like this: 'Things got rough for the foreskins of Jesus as the Middle Ages matured.'"

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
I'm starting to have high hopes for this graphic novel garnering an unusual amount of acclaim. PW sayd Mazzucchelli has been "a master without a masterpiece" - until now - and compares the work to Pynchon and Gaddis.

FICTION

NOVELS
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
OK, I was tantalized the moment I read about this - just like everybody else (it's selling like hotcakes). What isn't clear to me is exactly what's been done to the original text. Some customer reviews claim that select words have been replaced with 'zombie' or 'attack,' but I also gather that whole passages have been written and inserted. Sounds like a smart experiment at best (a remix of sorts?) or a funny, gimmicky joke at worst.

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
I've never warmed up to (MacArthur genius) Whitehead, whose The Intuitionist I found clever but heavy, but I've been told by a friend that the new novel is lighter and more enjoyable. Perhaps I'll give it a try.

The Collector of Worlds: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton by Iliya Troyanov
Solids reviews for this triptych-approach to Burton's life.

All the World's a Grave by John Reed
How did I miss this? A clever mash-up of the Bard's characters and plots, including quotes from the originals. Came out months ago. Potentially awful, true, but also potentially fascinating. (Also potentially 10x the feat Grahame-Smith has pulled off.)

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada
Fallada, a German writer who wrote this novel about resistance against the Nazis, died in 1947, and this is the book's first translation into English.

Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins
Crime novel involving Dashiell Hammett and the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. Compared to Ellroy - which must please the author - and set in San Francisco.

The Brothers Boswell by Philip Baruth
A "chilling literary thriller" (PW), this does sound interesting.

Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S. G. Browne
The zombie and vampire memes are bigger than ever. Could this "rom-zom-com" fail to be a hit? Actually, yes, so far. Oh those fickle zombie readers and their Regency loving ways.

School for Love by Olivia Manning
One of the latest in the NYRB line of underappreciated classics, this story of a young man's coming of age during World War II when he finds himself in a Jerusalem boarding house presided over by a strict fundamentalist who's been compared to Dickens's Miss Havisham. Intro by Jane Smiley.

Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead
The latest from Olmstead sounds almost Cormac McCarthyesque, though I haven't yet seen the comparison made. 1916, an expedition into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa, some brutal action, beautiful prose.

Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem
In anticipation of the centennial of this classic, a new edition with a foreword by Tony Kushner.

The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
Strong reviews so far for the latest from Meno (Hairstyles of the Damned) - could be a breakthrough book for his career.

SHORT STORIES
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories by Kevin Wilson
For some reason, whenever I see the phrase "Southern Gothic" in a description of a book, my pulse races a bit. Reviews make it clear that this collection has a lot more going on that - but they do emphasize the weird side of the ordinary. Oh, yes, I'll be taking a look at this.

Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon
Hemon's literary star continues to rise, and you can expect this collection to make an impact.

Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective by Donald Thomas
Pastiches of the Holmes stories by Sir Arthur. (More Holmes pastiches by Faye and King and an anthology ed. by Greenberg et al. listed under 'More Noteworthy Fiction')

Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates
A friend recently praised Oates as one of his favorite authors, and the stories I've read have, indeed, been strong.

The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca
I'm not sure what to make of this from what I've read online, but I had to add it to the list. PW: "fans of South American literature and the macabre should be pleased."

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi
All Other Nights by Dara Horn
Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames
Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye
Midwinter by Matthew Sturges
New Valley by Josh Weil
News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso (Dalkey)
Sherlock Holmes in America ed. by Martin Greenberg, Daniel Stashower, Jon Lellenberg
Side Effects by Harvey Jacobs
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King
The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith
The Unincorporated Man by Dani and Eytan Kollin
A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio
The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of Robert Burns by Arnold Johnston
We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music by Greg Kot
Kot is a helluva smart guy - I've seen him speak at an author event as well as on his radio show, not to mention read his work in the Tribune - and if there's one person whose take I'd like to hear on this topic, he's my man.

Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti
Account of the 1911 theft of the world's most famous painting, and an exploration of the painting's enigmatic appeal.

LITERATURE
Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
Shakespeare books are common, but it's rare that one should receive such praise: "exceptional...Lucid, rich and erudite...essential" (Kirkus); "not only an outstanding scholarly accomplishment but also a pleasure to read" (Library Journal).

Mercury Dressing: Poems by J. D. McClatchy
Publishers Weekly praises McClatchy's sixth collection for being his most various to date, and Library Journal praises his ability to combine the "classical with the contemporary." Me, I'm curious about the poem that weaves poetry from the gossip of gay men at the opera.

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956-1991
I'm not usually interested in collections of letters by literary stars, but this sounds exceptionally interesting.

La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language by Dianne R. Hales
This sounds irresistible to me.

The Renegade: Writings on Poetry and a Few Other Things by Charles Simic
If only the great poets would publish prose more often, I'm sure I'd read them more. Ha! Kidding.

Beaumarchais by Maurice Lever
Extra! Extra! The writer of The Barber of Seville had quite a life. Read all about it!

Installations by Joe Bonomo
Prose poems that have to do with art installations? Scanty info about this at BN, but I once took a class from this poet, and he was a great talent (not that he'd know me from Adam - this was years ago). Absolutely had the entire class entranced. Most definitely worth checking out, and part of the "National Poetry Series."

HISTORY
1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age by David Andress
Andress charts the health of Enlightenment ideals in France, Britain and the U.S.

1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick
Because '68 was getting just too much of the limelight.

Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler by
And just in time to accompany the Fallada novel, a new history of the domestic resistance to the Nazi agenda.

The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans
Sensational reviews for this last of a trilogy of books on the history of Nazi Germany.

POLITICS/CURRENT EVENTS
Columbine by Dave Cullen
10 years on, this account sets the record straight on what went down in Columbine. It claims to dispel myths, and from reviews I've read, it does just that. I do wonder why this particular act of horrific violence touched such a cultural nerve when so many other have failed to. A fascinating subject - a new Leopold and Loeb?

Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (And Redeeming Promise) of Our Country by William Greider
Timely look at the state of our democracy and economy from this legendary reporter.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich
Another season, another tour from acclaimed nature writer Heinrich.

Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets by Jo Marchant

MISC.
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan
Does the success of this book depend on people admitting to themselves that they make mistakes, forget things and think too much of themselves?

The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley
Excellent reviews for this book aimed at a general audience; Booklist: "A work that makes philosophy matter again."

And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture by Bill Wasik
Draws on Levitt and Gladwell and the author's own experiments with flash-mobs to explore online "viral" phenomena.

Judas: A Biography by Susan Gubar
Not a religious effort, a history of Judas as a cultural figure. After reading Master and Margarita and being absolutely mesmerized by the Pontius Pilate storyline, this sounds intriguing to me.

What Not to Say: Philosophy for Life's Tricky Moments by Mark Vernon
Maybe I should pick this up. I never know what to say in awkward situations. Oh, and this review in LJ sucked me in: "its most thought-provoking aspect is the analysis of modern-day trials and tribulations in the context of Greek myths, ancient philosophies, and great literature."

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Cat Power: A Good Woman by Elizabeth Goodman
City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success by Nelson George
False Economy by Alan Beattie
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion ed. by Ronald L. Numbers
How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever by Jack Horner and James Gorman
I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech by Ralph Keyes
Inquisition by Toby Green
Japrocksampler: How the Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll by Julian Cope
Loch Ness Monster and Raining Frogs by Albert Jack
Puttin' on the Ritz: Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache by Peter Levinson
She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography by Robert Crawford
The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America by William Kleinknecht
The Shanghai Gesture by Gary Indiana
The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss
The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan
Welcome to the Aquarium: A Year in the Lives of Children by Julie Diamond
West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State by Mark Arax

Of Gay Interest:

Ugly Man: Stories by Dennis Cooper
New work from Cooper is always worth attention, especially when it includes titles like "The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites" and "The Anal-Retentive Line Editor."

Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division by Jon Ginoli
New City Chicago, reviewing the book for the author tour, said the book was humorous and extremely entertaining. Haven't seen any other reviews so far.

Inferno Heights by Mitzel
I love the Calamus Bookstore (Boston) newsletter, and I'm very curious about Mitzel's new book.

Also Noteworthy:
Chronic: Poems by D. A. Powell

Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities by Julie Abraham

Of Chicago Interest:

Ruins by Achy Obejas
New novel from a prominent Chicago novelist - certainly worth some attention beyond the Windy City as well.

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville
This debut novel is creating some excitement, at least here in Chicago.

Also Noteworthy:
Turn Coat (Dresden Files Series #11) by Jim Butcher

Graphic Work:

Miss Don't Touch Me by Hubert and Kerascoet
Looks like a juicy murder mystery set in Twenties Paris - the young woman on the cover sports a Louise Brooks-ish bob. Sex, violence, comics - you can't go far wrong, clearly.

Be a Nose! by Art Spiegelman
"Warts and all" presentation of Spieglman's private sketchbooks.

New Book Roundup: November/December 2008

2009-01-22T22:56:00.014-06:00

In this latest roundup of forthcoming books of interest, there aren't too many big names, which makes it an ideal time to take a chance on some lesser known and new writers. (Say, that'd make a nice new year's resolution, wouldn't it?) Finish up what you're reading now - there's lots more to look forward to.

TOP PICKS

Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
Gaitskill made her reputation with stories, and I for one can't wait to get my hands on this, her return to stories after the successful novel Veronica. Due out in March.

Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson
Great premise - two children whose mother has raised them to have an extremely distorted understanding of the world outside (that it's a dangerous wasteland) must come to grips with reality when she disappears. Fingers crossed as more reviews come in.

Garfield Minus Garfield by Jim Davis
An online snarkster posted Garfield strips minus the cat, so that his owner appears to be talking to himself - a strange "realistic" interpretation of the strip. Surprise! Creator Jim Davis approved, and now it's a book.

FICTION

NOVELS
Drood by Dan Simmons
Simmons has created a complex thriller that imagines what could have led Dickens to write his last, unfinished novel. (Be warned: its as long as a Dickens novel.)

The Women by T.C. Boyle
I expect Boyle's latest, about Frank Lloyd Wright, could be one of his biggest successes yet. Reviews are excellent so far.

The Winner of Sorrow by Brian Lynch
A debut novel about the 18th-century English poet William Cowper. I wonder what the pros and cons are of taking up a minor historical figure as opposed to the usual legends like Shakespeare and Jane Austen for a historical novel. This one sounds quite good, as you'd expect from Dalkey.

Lowboy by John Wray
Wait, have I got this right? It's about a schizo teen who thinks he can save the world by getting laid?

The Seance by John Harwood
A neo-Victorian supernatural thriller that's being compared to Wilkie Collins and LeFanu. It seems all the recent interest in vampire stories has sent many readers and writers back to classic gothic, horror and ghost stories. What fun!

Spade & Archer: The Prequel to The Maltese Falcon by Joe Gores
I know what you're thinking, because I thought it, too: some lamewad wrote a prequel to The Maltese Falcon? But what reviews: "Gores has not only pulled off the Herculean task of writing a prequel to The Maltese Falcon but also created a rip-roaring yarn of his own that will please even the crustiest of Hammett devotees"; and "Gores, a far more virtuoso plotter than Hammett, keeps multiple pots boiling furiously while providing a pitch-perfect replica of his master's voice...."

The Republic of Vengeance: A Novel of Greece and Rome by Paul Waters
"In the tradition of Mary Renault, Steven Pressfield, and Robert Graves...," this kicks off a planned series.

Empty Mirror by J. Sydney Jones
Fin-de-siècle Vienna is the setting for this mystery that features Gustav Klimt, Krafft-Ebing and others in supporting roles. Warm, if not effusive, praise so far.

Book from the Sky by Robert Kelly
Story in which "a boy...is captured by a group of aliens who take him to a cave and...remove his...lungs and other internal organs to replace them with two gray squirrels, a live hawk, a shoe, and a variety of other bizarre objects." Well, I have to include a curiosity like that, don't I?

SHORT STORIES
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
This Pakistan-centered collection's getting some strong attention so far, could be an early breakout of 2009.

San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics ed. by Peter Maravelis
Speaking of Hammett, here he rubs elbows with Bierce, London, Pronzini and Gores - among others.

Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
One of the better regulars who contribute to the New Yorker, in my humble opinion.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
I read the fun title story (an entertaining and occasionally gruesome tale of Vikings told in an informal dude-ish voice) in an anthology back in 2004. What else does Tower have up his sleeves?

Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories by Lauren Groff
Groff sounds like she has a wonderful imagination and covers a range of styles and genres in this collection.

The Living Dead ed. by John Joseph Adams
Poor zombies. Always in the shadow of those more popular, more glamorous and sophisticated vampires. Here's your moment to shine.

Future Missionaries of America by Matthew Vollmer
A first collection that Library Journal praised as a "rare and gratifying achievement" and compared to T.C.Boyle. Not a bad start.

Fast Ships, Black Sails ed. by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Pirate stories, ahoy! From the scurvy likes of Kage Baker, Michael Moorcock, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear, and Naomi Novik. Arr.

SF/FANTASY
The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling
New novel from "[o]ne of cyberpunk fiction's brightest stars," the title refers to maidens of Greek Architecture - their story updated for a world teetering on the edge of self-destruction.

Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes
A supernatural thriller that involves a Victorian era backstory and a Lovecraftian evil. Have heard mixed things about Barnes's first novel, but he seems like one to watch, at least.

Best American Fantasy 2008 ed. by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Reviews aren't quite as good for the Vandermeer's Fantasy anthology, but all agree that there are some keepers here.

Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress
For me, SF usually needs a good hook. Here's one: "aliens arrive on the moon and announce that they must make amends for a grave injustice they caused the human race 10,000 years ago."

More Noteworthy Fiction:
As a Friend by Forrest Gander
Doghead by Morten Ramsland
Enclave by Kit Reed
Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling
Woods and Waters Wild: The Collected Early Stories of Charles de Lint, Volume Three
Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
The Siege by Ismail Kadare
Body Surfing by Dale Peck
Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
Coventry: A Novel by Helen Martin Humphreys
Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Museum of Human Beings by Colin Sargent
The Virgin of Solitude by Taghi Modarressi (Anne Tyler's late husband)
The Unknown Knowns by Jeffrey Rotter

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Me, Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood by Cheeta the Chimp
Early responses to this book by the star of the Tarzan films and Doctor Doolittle (among others) have been highly enthusiastic.

The Reel Truth: Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Making an Independent Film by Reed Martin
For a while it was a dream to rival that of writing "the great American novel." Glad to see there are still books being produced to help the dreamers.

Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood : Rebels, Reds, and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 Iconic Films ed. by Graydon Carter
Classics of the 50s through the 70s like Rebel Without a Cause, Sweet Smell of Success, All About Eve, and Midnight Cowboy receive fresh scrutiny in this collection of articles from the famed glossy-with-smarts.

Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture by Bruce Jackson
Collection of prisoner id photos from a state prison farm the early 20th century. Not the kind of thing I usually include, but it sounds like it would be fascinating

Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers by John Broven
A look at the recording industry from the 40s to the 60s during the birth of rock - boy, does this sound fascinating.

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper
I'm convinced that the publishing industry is (more slowly) headed for a similar fate, if it's not careful.

Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by
This book from Arts & Letters Daily founder Dutton goes Darwinian in its view of the Arts.

Philosophy of the Coen Brothers by Mark T. Conard
More than most films, the Coens' work really does invite speculation about just what their films mean. I mean, what the hell kind of view of humanity do they have any way? That question kind of obsessed me after each of their last two films. Anyway, apparently it's not just me - there are several books on this topic.

The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians, and Their Art by Tim Blanning
"[T]races the path of music from its place as servant to its current position of supremacy over all other arts in terms of status, influence, and material rewards." I'm not sure I agree with that 'supremacy' bit, but it sounds like a fascinating and original argument.

You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story by Richard Schickel, George Perry
Just in time for Christmas (oops), this history of the great studio is sure to please the cinephile in your life.

Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer by Emanuel Levy
Vincente Minelli: The Art of Entertainment ed. by Joe McElhaney
Two new books about one of the truly great Hollywood directors.

LITERATURE
On the Dot: The Speck That Changed the World by Alexander Humez, Nicholas D. Humez
It's widely agreed that the microhistory is played out as a genre, but for some reason this one appeals. Maybe I just have some kind of punctuation fetish. (Though to be precise, this account goes far beyond the dot's use as a mark of punctuation.)

Shakespeare and Modern Culture by Marjorie Garber
Goodness, Garber's been a busy bee, with a book on my last roundup as well.

Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd
Have you heard it's Poe's bicentennial this year?

Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Jenny Bond, Chris Sheedy
Ian Fleming worked on the Enigma code? This book promises of feast of tidbits, trivia and stories behind dozens of classic novels.

American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry ed. by Cole Doug Swensen
"Hybrid" refers to the American synthesis of traditional lyric poetry and experimentalism. Doesn't seem like your typical Norton anthology.

Utopia's Debris: Selected Essays by Gary Indiana
The Library Journal review mentions several essays in the collection that are appreciations of lesser-known writers and artists. Sounds like reason enough to check out Indiana's latest collection.

HISTORY
Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb
The story of how Eichmann was brought to justice is one I've always wanted to know a little more about.

Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America by Barry Werth
The Gilded Age provides a fascinating lens (or mirror, pick your metaphor) for understanding our own time - this book considers the origins of that disgusting ideology, social Darwinism.

The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America by Steven Johnson
Could also file this under Science - the story of a polyglot who apparently played a walk-on role in the founding of our nation. Johnson's a highly accessible writer.

Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution by Richard Beeman
Publishers Weekly: "now the most authoritative, up-to-date treatment of the Constitutional Convention since Catherine Drinker Bowen's Miracle at Philadelphia over 40 years ago."

The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village by Thomas Robisheaux
This story of witch persecution sounds absolutely riveting. What a disgusting yet fascinating phenomenon of history.

POLITICS
Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future by Will Bunch
Hear, hear. I love a good title.

Life You Can Save: A Simple Solution to Global Poverty by Peter Singer
How much should we give to charity? Specifically to the fight against poverty? Singer wants our help to make a better world.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself by Hannah Holmes
Are we so different from the animals? Fascinating topic.

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything ed. by John Brockman
Latest in an interesting series.

Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne
Sure to be the target of review-bombing on Amazon and every other bookstore web site.

MISC.
Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
This in-depth portrait of Katrina-scarred New Orleans is one of the few books on the topic that's appealed to me; sounds like the author has dug a little deeper into the history, character and just plain "weirdness" of the place - in other words, what's lastingly interesting about it.

Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing by Daniel Bergner
Calling all voyeurs, your next book awaits.

The Art of Conversation: A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure by Catherine Blyth
Need a gift idea for the boor in your life?

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Isn't decision-making hard enough without becoming self-conscious of the process itself? Sheesh. Well, does sound interesting.

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World by Trevor Paglen
Paglen became fascinated by the redacted spots on governement maps, saw them as obvious invitations to curiosity.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
Try to Tell the Story: A Memoir by David Thomson
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man by Duncan Wu
Why Victorian Literature Still Matters by Philip Davis
John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns
Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy Daugherty
Reading Matters: Five Centuries of Discovering Books by Margaret Willes
Prairie Spring : A Journey into the Heart of a Season by Peter Dunne
Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster by Alison Weir
Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror by John Merriman
Versed: Poems by Rae Armantrout
Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet by Mark Adams
Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age by D. J. Taylor
Porn and Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture by Damon Brown
Birds in Flight: The Art and Science of How Birds Fly by Carrol L. Henderson
End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival by Marq de Villiers
Myth of American Exceptionalism by Godfrey Hodgson
Oh Dad!: A Search for Robert Mitchum by Lloyd Robson
Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage by Eric Frattini
Short Films: How to Make and Distribute Them by Nathan Parker
Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War by Pratap Chatterjee
Jonathan Demme: Interviews by Robert E. Kapsis
Verses and Versions : Three Centuries of Russian Poetry by Vladimir Nabokov

Of Gay Interest:

Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
Handy point of entry for fans of Fun Home who want to catch up on the strip that put Bechdel on the map. (But I'm talking about myself again...)

Also Noteworthy:
Got 'Til It's Gone by Larry Duplechan
Labor of Love: The Story of One Man's Extraordinary Pregnancy by Thomas Beatie
Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks, 1900-1975 by Stephen J. Gertz
Jesus Is Sending You This Message: Stories by Jim Grimsley
Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights by C. Todd White
Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights by Gary Mucciaroni
Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank

Of Chicago Interest:

Ruins by Achy Obejas
The much-loved Chicago writer returns with a new novel.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them by Amy Dickinson
Dickinson is better known by Chicago Tribune readers for her "Ask Amy" column.

Also Noteworthy:
To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Mia Bay
Voices by Lucille Clifton
Way Through Doors: A Novel by Jesse Ball (SAIC teacher)

Graphic Work:

Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack by Nicholas Gurewitch
New collection of the stunningly inventive alternative comic strip.

Also Noteworthy:
Kramers Ergot 7 ed. by Sammy Harkham
The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar
Moomin Book Three: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip by Tove Jansson
Welcome to Dingburg [Zippy the Pinhead] by Bill Griffith
The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 by Charles M. Schulz
Krazy and Ignatz 1943-1944: He Nods in Quiescent Siesta by George Herriman

Discovery of the Week: Bob Dorough

2009-01-19T21:26:00.002-06:00

Another flaming example of my ignorance, but I never gave a moment's thought to the notion that there might actually be an artist lurking behind those Schoolhouse Rock songs - cult objects of nostalgia for my generation. But there is. His name is Bob Dorough, and I just this evening noticed his voice on Nellie McKay's latest album, Obligatory Villagers. That unmistakable voice! Somehow I imagine him sitting around somewhere in the cosmos with Sterling Holloway and John Fiedler.

A couple items from Youtube are in order to celebrate my discovery. Neither of these are videos in the sense of having much visual content but are examples of that common YouTube practice of sharing soundfiles where the users are.

Here's Dorough doing a marvelous cover of a song by a certain moptopped 60s sensation:

And since there isn't a clip of his version, and because this is so outstanding, here's Blossom Dearie performing Dorough's song (oh my god I love this so much) "I'm Hip":

Muse recently confessed to me that she's never quite sure what's meant by "hipster," and I did a poor job of giving my take. But this song does the job professionally. Wow. And how.

And come to think of it, those Schoolhouse Rock songs are classics, too. It's not like any old hack could have written them.

New Book Roundup: September/October 2008

2008-11-18T21:44:00.000-06:00

I'm somewhat surprised that this roundup is so skimpy on works of fiction, but what can I say? Not much grabbed me. Still, there were a few notable exceptions, plus several strong nonfiction books to carry us through the busy holiday season, including more than one for Sherlock Holmes fans. Happy reading.

TOP PICKS

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles by Pierre Bayard
That clever Bayard joins the explosion in Holmesiana with this audacious proposal that the master detective got it wrong in one of his most famous cases.

The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson
Excellent reviews keep pouring in, and I have to say I'm eager to see this book. Should make an interesting companion to one of the year's quirky standouts, Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic.

Wondermark: Beards of Our Forefathers by David Malki
A collection of my latest favorite comic strip, which has made The Onion that much more irresistible.

FICTION

NOVELS
The Private Patient by P. D. James
I don't usually go for mysteries, but James seems unusually talented and intelligent.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison
I have to admit I'm not the world's greatest fan of Morrison's later work, but this short novel sounds promising.

Courage by Alan Littell
Slim novel of maritime adventure, quietly garnering praise.

Disquiet by Julia Leigh
Sounds serious and dark, but what a rave from Kirkus: "It's difficult to imagine a reader who will not be electrified by this haunting, masterfully told story. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine a reader who will not be changed by it. Brilliant, possibly perfect."

The End by Salvatore Scibona
This Graywolf title was recently nominated for the National Book Award. I found it too taxing to finish, but I also admired a lot about it and think the author could emerge as a major writer.

Log of the S. S. the Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford
Dalkey reprints a novella that sounds like quite an oddball. I can find little in the way of reviews so far, but the strange title alone grabbed my attention.

SHORT STORIES
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes ed. by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec
Mixed reviews, but the standouts at least may worth reading.

Murder Short & Sweet ed. by Paul D. Staudohar
Collection of classic murder mystery stories by masters like Christie, Doyle, Westlake, Poe and Dunsany. Oh, and Updike, strangely.

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock
Dark story collection that's said to be distantly related to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, OH, this sounds a bit like Thom Jones territory to me. It's been out for a while, but I unaccountably skipped over it. A friend recommended it, and it's also starting to show up on best of the year lists.

SF/FANTASY
Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
When it comes to SF, it sometimes seems like you have to consult a completely different set of review sources, but this book seems to be emerging with buzz across the board. The story takes place in a world where demon possession is a common phenomenon.

Night Work by Thomas Glavinic
An "extraordinary apocalyptic novel," a debut from a young Australian novelist.

Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan
PW calls this an "exceptional debut horror collection" that evokes Henry James and M.R. James.

Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons
Shakespeare figures in this far-future speculative novella.

The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip
PW: "An unseen bell haunts a seaside town and a magical mansion in this delicate fable from World Fantasy Award winner McKillip...."

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Alembical ed. by Lawrence M. Schoen
Camera by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
The Paris Enigma by Pablo De Santis
Wall of America by Thomas M. Disch
The Proteus Sails Again by Thomas M. Disch
New Lives by Ingo Schulze
A Lion Among Men (Wicked Years Series #3) by Gregory Maguire
Paris Noir ed. by Aurlien Masson
Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction ed. by Maxim Jakubowski
Pets by Bragi Olafsson
Tierra del Fuego by Francisco Coloane
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs
Noir: A Novel by Olivier Pauvert
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
The Turnaround by George P. Pelecanos
Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business by Ethan Mordden
Florenz Ziegfeld was one of the most interesting entertainers in American history, and Mordden seems - at least in theory - a great choice to write about him. Reviewers have overwhelmingly agreed so far.

Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life by John Adams
Memoir and reflections from America's leading living composer.

A Devil to Play: One Man's Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra's Most Difficult Instrument by Jasper Rees
Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz and American Culture by Krin Gabbard
The French Horn does indeed have a reputation for difficulty, but this book sounds charmingly accessible. Meanwhile, jazz trumpet, not classical, is the focus of Gabbard's cultural study.

The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love ed. by David Sterritt and John Anderson
I'm sorry, but Point Blank, Peeping Tom and Videodrome don't sound like "B" movies to me. Hopefully this book will offer something a little more unexpected.

Best Music Writing 2008 ed. by Nelson George
I absolutely never miss this annual, which can always be counted on as an engrossing read.

LITERATURE
Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini
Noted critic Parini looks at books that had a major cultural impact on American society (think Uncle Tom's Cabin). A refreshing change from the usual emphasis on strictly literary achievement.

Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford
I know I, for one, can hardly celebrate Christmas without Dickens.

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
Linguist Everett recounts what he learned from a small South American tribe.

The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography by Russell Miller
Another bio of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam
Worldly Wisdom: Great Books and the Meanings of Life by James Sloan Allen
A pair of new books on the subject of great books - the former on the program of that name, and the second a more typical presentation of canonical texts.

HISTORY

1001 Days That Shaped the World by Peter Furtado
Spied this in a bookstore and found it to be a compulsive browser's delight.

The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard
A study of what's known about ancient Pompeii, that fascinating site of catastrophe.

The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by Philipp Blom
Just a century ago, Europe was such a different place. Sounds like it would make for lively reading.

POLITICS
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
Somehow I missed this before, but it's obviously emerged as one of the most important books covering the Bush administration.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Great Equations by Robert P. Crease
I doubt I'd actually read this, but I like to imagine I could. (I wonder how many copies of Roberto Bolano's books are sold for the same motivation?)

Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio
Science survey from the astrophysicist and author of The Golden Ratio.

MISC.
Curious Men by Frank Buckland
The latest from the McSweeney's imprint edited by Paul Collins, scavenger extraordinaire of historical eccentrics. This is apparently a collection of stories from a Victorian collector of oddities. Sounds fun.

Wired for Survival: The Rational (and Irrational) Choices We Make, from the Gas Pump to Terrorism by Margaret Polski
Another book that mines that interesting Dubner/Gladwell/Sacks area of our inner lives.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Personally, I'm pretty much done with Gladwell's books, but I have to admit he's onto something.

Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know: The Autobiography by Ranulph Fiennes
Wait, what? Ralph and Joseph have an older brother who's a rugged he-man explorer? Weird! I had no idea their family was so prominent.

Utopia's Debris: Selected Essays by Gary Indiana
Cultural critic Indiana's latest collection promises to take up a variety of interesting subjects from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Louis-Ferdinand Celine to Susan Sontag.

Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting It, Giving It, Loving It, Missing It ed. by Paula Derrow
A variety of essays about the female sexual experience, inclusive of a range of orientations.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
The Best American Magazine Writing 2008 ed. by ASME
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change by Ada Louise Huxtable
Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies by Donald Spoto
Selected Poems by James Merrill
Lewis Carroll in Numberland by Robin Wilson
Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War by Robert Roper
Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller
Graham Greene: A Life in Letters ed. by Richard Greene
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood
Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness by Mark S. Micale
The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil by Steven Nadler
The Complete History of Piracy by Angus Konstam
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own. by David Carr
New York Stories: The Best Writing from Four Decades of New York Magazine
Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life by Frances Wilson
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 ed. by Jerome Groopman
From Eve to Dawn series by Marilyn French
The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern by Keith Devlin
Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again by Roger H. Martin
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

Of Gay Interest:

The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave
I've long meant to look up some of Glave's stories - sounds like there are some choice selections in his latest collection.

Also Noteworthy:
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
Sweet Poison by Ellen Hart
Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy by Savannah Knoop

Of Chicago Interest:

If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales by Tony Romano
A collection of linked short stories exploring the Italian immigrant experience in Chicago.

Alinea by Grant Achatz
Speaking of Chicago and food...

Also Noteworthy:
Music Quickens Time by Daniel Barenboim
The Thin Black Line by Hugh Holton

Graphic Work:

Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds
This acclaimed graphic novel is very loosely inspired by Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd - so loosely that many reviews haven't even mentioned it.

Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan ed. by Chip Kidd et al.
Good lord, this sounds amusing. My fingers are itching to leaf through it.

Skim by Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki
The NY Times included this in a list of the best Children's and Young Adult lit of the year, and it sounds it sounds well worth reading, though some readers have found it too bleak.

Also Noteworthy:
Portable Frank by Jim Woodring
Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet, Clement Oubrerie
Dungeon: Monstres, Volume 1: The Crying Giant by Johann Sfar et al.
Welcome to the Jungle (Dresden Files Series) by Jim Butcher, Ardian Syaf
The Nancy Book by Joe Brainard

Chicago International Film Festival 2008 - Preview

2008-10-15T22:53:00.006-05:00

Wondering what to see at the Chicago International Film Festival? Take some tips from a veteran fest-goer.

I think it was TimeOut Chicago that opined that the rookie mistake is to attend films that have distribution and are coming back soon in regular runs. That's actually rather sophomoric advice in my experience, because the truth is that if it's actually good, it almost always comes back eventually (though that's somewhat decreasingly true now with indie distributors dropping like flies). In other words, if you focus on films that won't be back, then you'll be watching some time wasters. My advice, if you're looking to see more than a couple films, is to get a nice balance between films likely to return and films that haven't been picked up yet. But the most important advice I can give is see what appeals to you. Don't just go by the critics. Look at trailers online. And take some chances.

Here's another pointer you won't get from the local papers: 600 N. Michigan is a terrible venue for foreign films. If you're used to stadium seating (and who isn't?), you're going to hate trying to read subtitles over people's heads at this outdated multiplex. Unless you're really tall or just really tolerant of discomfort, don't see subtitled films there. CIFF shows sell out, especially after the first weekend, and remember you're paying pricey ticket fees. Here is your mantra: the good ones will come back, the good ones will come back.

Films I've bought tickets for so far:
Julia - it's Tilda Swinton getting back to her edgier roots in a film with a crazy kidnapping plot; no local reviews so far, and it may not be back

Of Time and the City - Terrence Davies documentary about Liverpool has gotten rave reviews in Europe, and I've enjoyed other docs about places, like Los Angeles Plays Itself

Quiet Chaos - I'm taking a chance on this one, reviews are more mixed, but I have an interest in Italian film generally and liked Nanni Moretti in The Son's Room - may not come back

Revanche - Austrian thriller, excellent revs so far, just had its N.Am. premiere in August at Telluride, on the verge of being picked up for distribution

Tokyo Sonata - I've missed the boat on Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa so far; this is supposedly a turn away from the J-Horror work that established him, but it's reputed to be all the stronger for it

Films I want to see but am passing on - for now:
Christmas Tale - the other big French film at Cannes, dying to see this but couldn't fit this in my schedule, and IFC has picked it up

Two Lovers - this "loose rethink of Dostoevsky's 'White Nights'" had polarized critics, and having just (by coincidence) seen and loved Visconti's version I'm chomping at the bit to sample my first film by James Grey, but it's a Hollywood film, will be back early next year

Wendy and Lucy - been excited to see this, too, but it does have a limited release lined up in Dec. from the new (to me, anyways) Oscilloscope, who I'm betting will include Chicago

Let the Right One In - looks like this really cool-looking Scandinavian vampire movie is coming to Landmark within the next two months

The Chaser - I love South Korean cinema, but the mixed reviews on this film have me convinced to wait

Gomorrah - solid reviews for this Italian mafia flick, but I'm confident this will come back

The Good the Bad and the Weird - I'm very skeptical

I've Loved You So Long - critics say it's pretty good and mostly worth seeing for Kristin Scott Thomas, and after seeing her speak French in Tell No One I'm sold on it, but it's coming back to town very soon

The Secret of the Grain - frankly, I'm too excited about this Cesar winner to see it at 600 N. Michigan where I won't be able to read half the dialogue, so I'm taking my chances - please someone pick this one up!

Tokyo! - anthology films are often mixed bags, and early viewers have consistently said Gondry's segment is the best (he's back in form!), Bong disappointed, and Carax has polarized - I'm fans of all three directors

The Wave - this sounds good, based on a book about kids and cults that I had to read in high school, more interesting that's it's now been adapted in Germany

Sparrow - I'm not a huge Johnnie To fan so far, but maybe if it comes back I'll check it out

Ballast - coming to the Music Box very soon, wait and be comfortable

Timecrimes - sounds excellent, but I have a scheduling conflict

Avoid / Wait for DVD:
Cherry Blossoms - the Reader liked it, but everywhere else I've seen pretty bad reviews

24 City - consider me uncool, but this hyped-to-the-skies director is for hardcore artfilm types only - I'd rather watch such difficult material at home on dvd where I can puzzle it out at my leisure

New Book Roundup: July/August 2008

2008-09-30T20:40:00.008-05:00

This is the latest I think I've ever posted a roundup. Life has been crazy, but reading must go on. In order for that to happen, we need good books to choose from. The reviews from July and August announced great bounties for the Fall. Here's what looked most tantalizing to yours truly.

TOP PICKS

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
I started reading Stephenson's latest in a bookstore and got drawn in quickly. This may be the first Stephenson doorstopper I actually attempt to read. And reviews have been excellent.

Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt
Now this title just appeals to the 12 year old in me, anticipating every gross-out detail. Just read the rave reviews for a taste!

The Black Tower by Louis Bayard
Bayard's latest historical adventure has master detective Vidocq investigating the whereabouts of Marie Antoinette's lost son in 1818 France.

FICTION

NOVELS
2666 by Roberto Bolano
I've read that along with Savage Detectives this is Bolano's other great masterpiece. I've been sticking to his shorter work so far, but I'd like to tackle one of the biggies eventually.

The Little Book by Selden Edwards
Quirky time travel story that takes its American hero back to the Vienna of 1897, seems to be catching on with readers.

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
Seems like the author of The Yacoubian Building has got a good groundswell of interest going for his latest novel, a story of culture clash in post-9/11 Chicago.

Daphne by Justine Picardie
Inspired by Daphne du Maurier's fascination with the Brontes.

Sicilian Tragedee: A Novel by Ottavio Cappellani
A Sicilian-set "madcap comedy" that revolves around Shakespeare's work, and crazy lovers of various persuasions. Sounds fun.

Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam
Barbara Hoffert at Library Journal has good taste. She recommends this book. I ask no further questions.

A Week in October by Elizabeth Subercaseaux
Inventive Chilean novel of domestic subterfuge that plays with form. Booklist: "sublime."

Fault Lines by Nancy Huston
A bestseller in Europe, Huston's much-praised novel works its way back through the stories of four generations of a family ending with a WWII era shocker.

The Only Son by Stephane Audeguy
French novel that tells the story of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's older brother.

Esther's Inheritance by Sándor Márai
The works of Hungarian Márai (who died in California in 1989) have rather quietly been getting released to acclaim these last few years. One of these days I'm going to take the plunge and check him out.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Booker shortlisted, and it's probably not a bad idea to just pick up a book anytime you have no idea how to pronounce the author's name.

Victorine by Maude Hutchins
My Fantoms by Theophile Gautier
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
Trio of promising reprints from NYRB: The Hutchins is a pre-sexual revolution (1959) tale of a young girl's sexual awakening; Gautier's is a collection of "impossible" fictions from a friend of Hugo and Baudelaire; then, a science fiction classic from the author of The Prestige? Sold!

The Mirror in the Well by Micheline Aharonian Marcom
A short novel that "explores the mysteries of sexual obsession." Booklist's star reviewer Donna Seaman compares her to Anais Nin, Annie Ernaux and Kate Braverman. (Hmm, now I have a couple more names to look up.)

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox
Sequel to The Meaning of Night.

Homage to Czerny: Studies in Virtuoso Technique by Gert Jonke
I admire Europeans for being able to do something interesting with novels in under 200 pages.

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago
What would happen if one day people stopped dying? I've never read any Saramgo, but that still seems like a recognizably Saramago-esque conceit.

The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker
From the folks who produced the beautiful annotated Sherlock Holmes. Is that Santa's sled I hear?

SHORT STORIES
Ghosts of Chicago by John McNally
I've seen nary a blurb about this new book anywhere, though the author's novel America's Report Card was a critical success. Who dropped the ball on this one?

Ant King: And Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Songs of praise for this collection from Cory Doctorow and Booklist's Ray Olson. Reason enough to give this a try.

The Best of Lucius Shepard
Apparently Shepard is celebrated as a fine writer of dark fantasy, whatever that is. Sounds interesting.

SF/FANTASY
Orcs by Stan Nicholls
But have you considered things from the Orc point of view? Hmm?

An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe
This is a bewildering novel to sum up from reviews. It apparently belongs to every genre ever invented and is a mashup of period influences from most decades of the 20C. Sounds interesting, but I always wonder where a fiction crosses the line from interestingly weird to weirdness for its own sake, which is usually tedious. Hopefully Wolfe has figured all this out.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Holding Pattern by Jeffery Renard Allen
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi
The Great Weaver from Kashmir by Halladr Laxness
Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Knowledge of Hell by Antonio Lobo Antunes
Serena by Ron Rash

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Have You Seen ... ?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films by David Thomson
Mr. Thomson is some kind of super-crank. He's often insightful and always interesting (definitely worthwhile), but he can be wrong like nobody's business (see anything he's written about John Ford). Still, I'd love to see this book - I always think critics are at their best talking about what they love.

Patronizing the Arts by Marjorie Garber
What an interesting topic for Garber. If anyone can get to the heart of the perennial problem of the arts in America, I'll bet she can.

Scorsese by Ebert by Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert has long had a special affinity for Scorsese, so it's only fitting to see him publish a monograph on the topic.

John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
Sounds like the first major bio of Lennon, that ne plus ultra of Beatleness.

Fear of Music: The Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco by Garry Mulholland
I like list books. Yes, I'm part of the problem, I know.

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music by Ben Ratliff
Gleanings from interviews with Jazz stars.

LITERATURE
Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex ed. by Ellen Sussman
Four-Letter Words: And Other Secrets of a Crossword Insider by Michelle Arnot
In the former, various writers (including Antonya Nelson, Pagan Kennedy and Jonathan Ames) take on those four-letter words so near and dear to our ever-cursin' mouths. As for the latter, I come and go through crossword phases, but this sounds useful as well as interesting.

The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman
Call me a nerd, but this sounds interesting. (And besides, you'd only be stating the obvious.)

One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds
Olds is wonderful. She's one of the few poets whose new books tempt me to check them out.

Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems
This new selection of O'Hara poems has gotten some very impressive write-ups.

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings
Righting the Mother Tongue : From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman
In a review of the Hitchings, I learned that the word "pajamas" came from India, but it makes sense. Nifty. Imagine what I could learn from the full book? The Wolman promises to tell "the cockamamie story of English spelling." Ok. Yeah. Someone do, please explain this mess.

Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley
And now that we know how we got to this point, what's next?

All Art Is Propaganda : Critical Essays by George Orwell
Facing Unpleasant Facts : Narrative Essays by George Orwell
Reissues of classic essays. "Such, Such Were the Joys" and "Confessions of a Book Reviewer" sound particularly good.

Alphabet Juice : The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Therof: Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences: With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory by
Even with a huge subtitle I'm still not sure what this is, but in this case maybe that's part of the fun.

Casanova: Actor Lover Priest Spy by Ian Kelly
Casanova had a stint as a librarian? Makes sense to me, actually. Books are famously erotic.

HISTORY
Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman by Francine du Plessix Gray
Don't know why exactly, but this book sounds fascinating to me, and I'm no fan of biographies in general.

Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and Why They Went Wrong by Alan Axelrod
Sounds like the makings of some very fine Monty Python sketches. I just love titles like this.

Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914 by Robert Gildea
Who can resist the story of those crazy French and their revolutions? Pas moi, that's for durned sure.

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells
The Dark Ages may not be such a bad place to visit after all, but I still wouldn't want to live there.

Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning by Kathleen Burk
I still remember rolling my eyes and gently trying to explain things to my 6th grade deskmate who leaned over to me, confused, murmuring, "But I thought the British were our enemies?" If only this book had been handy.

POLITICS
The Opinion Makers: An Insider Reveals How Media Polls Distort Elections and Manipulate Democracy by David W. Moore
Everybody's working the refs these days, and who can blame them? They're lousy.

Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
Kos does seem like one bright guy. He's given me hope on at least one recent occasion.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End... by Philip Plait
Forget the bad Hollywood versions, here's the scoop on all the Apocalypses we could be in for.

Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross
Google scares me a little bit. You?

Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg
Perhaps it's true what they say about it coming down to us, the rats, the pigeons and the roaches. The mosquitoes, the Jellyfish, hmm, who else would you invite to the party?

MISC.
Numerati by Stephen Baker
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer
Just what are they doing with all the data that companies' web sites are collecting from us online? Hmm? And just what are you neighbors up to online? I've seen that Mrs. Kravtiz's office light on pretty late across the street. Both these books sounds fascinating.

The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chroniclesed. by Jeff Martin
Sounds funny. Includes a piece by Jim DeRogatis.

The Big Necessity by Rose George
Eww. Gross.

Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
I wonder how often Sarah has to endure, "I'd like to buy a Vowell" jokes when signing books. And is it just me or does she have the smuggest author photo of any living writer? She's probably an ok person, though.

Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson
As far as I'm concerned, we need as many people attacking pseudonews and pseudolearning as are willing to take up the call.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World by Sharon Waxman
Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani
We're Going to See the Beatles!: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There by Garry Berman
Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin
This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women ed. by Jay Allison, Dan Gediman
John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1956-1987 by John Ashbery
Versailles: A Biography of a Palace by Tony Spawforth
The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future by Guy Garcia
Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril by Eugene Jarecki
World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008 by Nicholas A. Basbanes
Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933 ed. by Joan Simon and Brigitte Leal
Searching for Schindler: A Memoir by Thomas Keneally
Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries, Decided by Sean Manning
Fabergé's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire by Toby Faber
There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the '60s by Peter Doggett
Green, Inc. by Christine MacDonald
Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds
Hollywood under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars by Thomas R. Lindlof
Master of Ceremonies: A Tale of Love, Murder, Rollerskates & Chippendales by David Henry Sterry
Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman
Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish
Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis with Geoffrey C. Ward

Of Gay Interest:

Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund White
I gather this is a briefer biography than White's Genet, but the match of subject and writer seems to have been made in publishing heaven.

Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder by Gyles Brandreth
Second installment in the mystery series, and critics are saying it's even better than the first.

Letters to a Stranger by Thomas James
Apparently this poet, who committed suicide at a young age 30 years ago, has a cult following.

What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? : A Novel by Antonio Lobo Antunes
"Epic" story of a Lisbon drag queen.

Twisted Head : An Italian American Memoir by Carl Capotorto
Growing up gay in the Bronx in the 70s. One of the best book cover designs of the year.

Also Noteworthy:
Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
Master of Ceremonies: A Tale of Love, Murder, Rollerskates & Chippendales by David Henry Sterry
Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder by Gyles Brandreth
Dancing In The Low Country by James Villas
Half a Crown by Jo Walton
Only the Lonely by Gary Zebrun

Graphic Work:

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman
Reprint of acclaimed work from the late 70s. It's Spiegelman, people. You know you want it.

Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
PW made the enticing comment that this grandfather of Japanese alt-comics "reads as if Haruki Murakami decided to try his hand at Manga."

The Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle
Another reportorial graphic novel on life in Asia from Delisle.

Pocket Full of Rain: And Other Stories by Jason
Jason's got a fun light style, and I'd like to read more of his books.

Also Noteworthy:
Flight, Volume 5 by Kazu Kibuishi
A Treasury of 20th Century Murder: The Lindbergh Child - America's Hero and the Crime of the Century by Rick Geary

Kushner honored; Music Box success; and some actual Opinions of Movies and Books Sprinkled Throughout

2008-09-18T21:15:00.006-05:00

My poor abandoned bloggy! Not to mention my poor readers, if I have any left. Well, you can see why I don't have pets. A month and no love. Let's just say by daytime life got more interesting in the last month. And now, all the stuff I've been squirreling away to blog about - and some of this stuff is, erm, a bit old, obviously. But still interesting, I hope:

Tony Kushner is the first recipient of a $200,000 theater prize, the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. Pinch me, I must be hallucinating: what is this unfamiliar pleasant sensation I just got reading the news? And maybe now Mr. Kushner will be inspired to write us some more work for the stage? Speaking of which, I'm psyched to see the Chicago premiere of Caroline, or Change at Court Theatre next week.

One of the biggest (upbeat) film stories of the summer has been the sleeper success of our own local Music Box's distribution of Tell No One. (See it, it's excellent - and, miraculously, still in theaters with no dvd street date announced.) And the Trib reported they plan to expand by buying more theaters locally. Cool. I've been thinking for years that the powers that be haven't been getting behind enough of the more accessible, mainstream-friendly foreign films (thereby making money to distribute more challenging fare), so I'm glad to see MB hit this one out of the park.

But I was sad to learn that: "Red Envelope gets pink slip." Apparently Red Env hadn't quite figured the game out. I hope they try again when the economy bounces back.

Crochet a Cthulhu! People rock. 'nuff said.

This year everyone's kvetching about the "glut" of films this year, but I believe the real problem is quality. Most 2008 films have been mediocre, at best. I still tend to believe that excellent films (the more accessible ones, anyway) will still find distributed. For now, anyway. (Though I was disturbed that Love Songs went straight to dvd without playing on Chicago screens. Boo.)

Roger Ebert on one of those questions people always ask critics: what's your favorite movie?

George Orwell, blogger.

Terry Teachout with yet another interesting observation (why didn't I start reading this guy years ago?): "Today's literary critics have fallen into the unfortunate habit of using the word "voice" when they mean 'style.'"

The Top Ten Graphic Novels.

Paul Collins on the folios as bad theft targets.

Confessions of a Strunkaholic.

A death that didn't get much notice.

RFK Jr. is especially creeped out to discover a fascist quoted in She-who-shall-not-be-named's convention speech. (For more, read the invaluable Frank Rich.)

Ben Burtt of Wall-e has long been one of my heroes for his sound design of the Star Wars movies (their single best feature, imho), and it's been so nice to see him get some spotlight treatment with the most recent success. [OK, this stuff is from way back in mid-summer, but tough titties. I love Ben Burtt.]

Interesting tidbit re: the Edward affair that made headlines so long ago now:

There's a literary angle to the story of former Senator John Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter. Hunter was once known as Lisa Druck, who in the 1980s was, shall we say, active on the party circuit in Manhattan . During that time, Jay McInerney was her boyfriend for at least a few months. He said later, "I spent a lot of time with her and her friends, whose behavior intrigued and appalled me to such an extent that I ended up basing a novel on the experience." The book is Story of My Life..., first published in 1988. The Druck/Hunter character is Alison Poole.
In yesterday's New York Times, Maureen Dowd commented: "When you appall Jay McInerney, you know you're in trouble."

In a recent timely ad, Facets recently highlighted the work of a renowned Georgian filmmaker, Otar Iosseliani.

Ooh, Hollywood, beware: A book can be just as disgusting as a movie.

You mean the "If Day" mentioned in Guy Maddin's brilliant My Winnipeg was real? Even better.

If you're interested in Chabon's book Maps and Legends which I recently read and enjoyed, this interview gives a good idea of the highlights.

A friend with an Oprah-like frame of mind sent me this semi-interesting article, "How to Live With Just 100 Things"

Jonathan Franzen is just downright nasty about Michiko Kakutani. (But then, many people are. Myself, I'm starting to pay closer attention to see what all the bitching's about.) A paragraph here (look for her name near the bottom) led me to Franzen's comments on Kakutani and some interesting thoughts on e-reading. I was also rather taken aback by some nasty things he says about Philip Roth (though he also gives him some muted praise, to be fair). I'm a recent convert to Roth and have so much catching up to do it's unbelievable, and I'm nowhere near ready to accept such an extreme verdict of him. By the way, I enjoyed but only mildly recommend Roth's latest Indignation. I surprisingly loved the movie Elegy, however, which is based on his The Dying Animal. I saw Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona (a rare treat from Allen*) on a Saturday and then saw her the next day in Elegy. Cruz was stunning in both. Why is it that her fire doesn't export when she travels to Hollywood, I wonder? Ah, who cares. When she works in Spain she is amazing.

The new MySpace jukebox sounds like a hopeful idea. I'm sick of seeing my favorite artists get discouraged as their excellent work gets them increasingly smaller paychecks. Could this help?

Fellow bloggers, a nerdy design tool I just read about: Colorblind Web Page Filter

Albert Hammond...Sr.? I'd never thought about it, but I recently came across him randomly during a search.

Thoughtful: "10 Ways to Become a Better Film Critic" by Evan Derrick

Hmm, more movie opinions. Frozen River: overrated, just ok. The Pool: pleasant, watchable, briefly snooze-inducing. (Literally. I heard snores behind me as I got drowsy.)

*[A footnote, in honor of the horrifically departed David Foster Wallace, whose work I'd only just read for the first time and was hugely looking forward to seeing what he'd do next! The book I read, btw, was Consider the Lobster, a collection of articles/essays which I highly highly recommend] Allen's VCB is a typical Woody Allen affair, storywise, pathetic if you look at it from a certain pov, but through some magic I haven't quite been able to isolate, it's one of his most enjoyable films of all time. See it.

Vive Cine-File Chicago

2008-08-15T18:25:00.001-05:00

Over the last couple months something has become clear to me: the excitement I used to feel every week picking up the Chicago Reader's film section? I now get that buzz out of reading the film coverage coming from Cine-File Chicago. It is absolutely the most exciting single source covering non-mainstream film in Chicago. I can no longer make plans for the weekend until I read it.

It's an aptly named web site, as the writing in their indispensable "Cine-List: a weekly guide to alternative cinema" is mainly going to be of interest to those of us who dig art films, foreign films, independent films, classic films, and experimental films. (Yes, yes, more more more!) Having completely freed themselves from covering the same films everyone else writes about was a shrewd move. It gives them a focus no one else has. I'm regularly surprised each Friday morning to check my inbox (sign up here) and find that certain films are playing in Chicago that I had no idea about--and I'm someone who has film calendars covering his refrigerator.

When I first started reading the Reader, lead critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (who I know I mention ad nauseum) was an invigorating champion for alternative cinema, and I'd never read any critic like him before. He still is such a champion in retirement, and I visit his blog regularly. The current staff of the Chicago Reader is also excellent. I'd argue they're one of the best teams in the country. Kudos, for example, to Andrea Gronvall, whose work has been featured a bit more often and who writes judiciously and with an interesting eye. Lead critic J.R. Jones is a fine critic, and I am in awe of the way he balances fairness, intelligence, reliable taste and a sense of humor (I like the pun that smartly ends his review of the dreadful looking What We Do Is Secret, for example). But I have to confess I miss the more pugnacious style of Rosenbaum. He's arguably borderline pretentious, but in taking film so seriously (too seriously? never!) he makes it exciting and interesting. And that's what many of the writers of Cine-File capture in their own individualistic ways.

Just read the reviews of Alexandra, The Color of Pomegranates, Frownland and Elegy of Life in the especially fine August 8th edition and tell me you aren't excited to see one of these films. I made it two of them (wanted to see all four), and I have to say I'm very glad I did. If I'd only read the Tribune or Rotten Tomatoes or the New York Times or even The Reader, I may not have gotten to both those films, and I certainly wouldn't have even noticed that the latter film was playing in town.

Back to J.R. Jones who, again, I really do like. (He's miles above the film critics of TimeOut Chicago, for example, blech.) Today I noticed this post from Creative Loafing (the company that bought the Reader), which says Jones's reviews will be used throughout the chain. It sounds like a smart economic move, and he's more than up to the job, but I also feel for the locals who are going to miss their old freelance writer. It may also explain why Jones's writing is becoming a bit more Times-like. His reviews will be run throughout the CL chain, so I'm betting he's having to focus more on films that play broadly and not just in Chicago. Interesting. Good for him, but is it good for us? And The Reader? Yup, I still read it. It's invaluable. But they're missing key alternative films here and there, and it's definitely Cine-File's gain.

Great Songwriters Think Alike

2008-08-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

Bizarre coincidence.

Aimee Mann, "Little Tornado," one the best tracks from her latest album @#%&*! Smilers:

Little tornado
Bane of the trailer park
Lifting houses to leave your mark...

Make it go faster
Baby go faster
Make it go twice the speed of you and me

Little tornado
You and the hurricane
Close your eyes and go campaign

And from "Last Day of Magic," the best song off The Kills' latest album, Midnight Boom:

Last day of magic
Where are you?
My little tornado
My little hurricano
We're two parties
Two parties ending
I'll be the man with the broom
If you'll be the dust of the room...

(Both albums well worth buying, by the way.)

New Book Roundup: May/June 2008

2008-07-25T17:01:00.012-05:00

What was all that hooey earlier in the year when the buzz had it that all the big books would be coming out way before the election and the Fall season would be quiet? There are lots of big books coming, many of which are listed below (and many of which aren't, because they haven't been reviewed yet, including forthcoming books by John Updike, Toni Morrison, and Thomas Friedman).

TOP PICKS

Home by Marilynne Robinson
A companion novel to Gilead? OK, now I'm even more motivated to read that novel. I adored Housekeeping (even liked the movie a lot), and I look forward to catching up with the suddenly (by her standards) prolific Robinson.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
I was charmed by the Moomins when I came across them last year, and this short novel for adults sounds lovely, the episodic story of a girl and her grandmother on an island in the Gulf of Finland. As it's a reissue and not a new work, reviews have been scarce but glowing.

FICTION

NOVELS

To Siberia by Per Petterson
The success of Petterson's Out Stealing Horses was one of the more surprising publishing events of the last couple years, and this novel sounds excellent, if rather bleak. It was actually written before Horses, in 1996, and has been available in English before, but Petterson's success warrants a re-launching of the title.

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
I'm late in posting about this book, which was out in June, but reviews have been steadily glowing. It's about the impact of the disappearance of a young girl on a group of characters. I know, bleak, right? Only that reviews say it has a sense of humor and surprising intelligence.

Train to Trieste by Domnica Radulescu
Consistently solid reviews for this story of a young woman whose love is complicated by the politics of the Ceausescu era in Romania.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
I'd originally skipped over this post-9/11 novel featuring cricket players in Brooklyn (call me crazy), but it received some spectacular reviews (Dwight Garner in the Times and James Wood in The New Yorker) and has become a surprise hit, compared by all to The Great Gatsby.

America America by Ethan Canin
Conventional wisdom has it that Canin is a great short story writer but struggles with novels and that this is his finest attempt yet. That's where the consensus ends.

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
Early reviews are mostly very strong for the latest novel by Auster. It's the first thing he's written in a while that I can imagine wanting to read.

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
Orphans and scallywags in this historical picaresque that sounds a bit like Robert Louis Stevenson or Charles Dickens.

Goldengrove by Francine Prose
It's early yet, and reviews are still coming in, but after having read Reading Like a Writer, there's no way I could skip over this novel.

Indignation by Philip Roth
Another gem of a novella from Roth, set in Winesburg, Ohio. Stellar reviews.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The reviews are lining up for what looks, to me, like a book that would appeal to the hip fiction crowd. "A romance spanning centuries" was the turn of phrase (thank you, Kirkus) that finally made this book sound potentially appealing to me.

Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont
Another girls' prep-school story, but it sounds good, has been compared to Donna Tartt who I really need to get around to reading one of these days, as it seems many authors want to make her particular lightning strike again.

Being Written: A Novel by William Conescu
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
I was quite surprised to see Amazon pick Galchen's book as a highlight of the month. Along with Tom McCarthy's Remainder, these seem to be part of a minor trend (back?) towards philosophical / postmodern / metafictional novels. David Foster Wallace, are you working on something new, by any chance?

Timeskipper by Stefano Benni
This "quasi-fantasy," or work of Italian "magical realism" (as two reviews have it) sounds very Italian and rather interesting.

The Club of Angels by Luis Fernando Verissimo
Celebrated writer's novella is back in print, and Booklist warns us not to miss this second chance.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
A hit in Europe, this philosophical French novel sounds rather strange, with one critic calling it "precious" and another calling it "elegant" and "refined."

When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale
Written from a nine-year-old's point of view, bad spelling and all, this is the story of an English family which flees to Rome to escape a stalker father. Some absolute raves.

The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant
A rough tale of crime and passion (and Depression Era bootlegging) which features Sherwood Anderson as a secondary character. Based on a true story?

The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by John R. King
Some raves for this imagining of what happened after that legendary encounter. Sherlockians know what I mean.

SHORT STORIES
The Development by John Barth
I read one of these stories in Best American Short Stories last year where it was one of the highlights, comic yet thoughtful.

A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
I was intrigued by Adrian's novel The Children's Hospital yet put off by its density - wouldn't mind getting a shorter introduction to his work, and he definitely sounds like an author with consistent themes and interests.

Old Devil Moon by Christopher Fowler
Includes a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, "The Lady Downstairs," told from the perspective of the detective's landlady. Sounds fun.

Vermeer's Milkmaid by Manuel Rivas
Galicia, Spain, is the setting for this collection of 16 stories.

Wifeshopping by Steven Wingate
Sounds like a collection worth picking up, at least for the highlights.

Young Irelanders by Gerard Donovan
I've been meaning to read something by this Irish writer, been hearing good things. A story of two from this collection might just make me a fan.

SF/FANTASY
Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten by Thomas M. Disch
Sounds like a typically heady outing from the (late) cult author.

Replay by Ken Grimwood
After a rave recommendation on NPR, this work of fantasy from the 80s, about a couple who get to live out the classic "if you could go back to your childhood knowing what you know now..." scenario, has started selling like hotcakes.

The Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins
Seems like one of the best-reviewed standalone fantasies of the year, and the Russian backdrop seems like a wonderful choice for the fantasy genre. (Yes, I know she isn't the first to use it, but still, it's fresher than the usual Anglo-Nordic backdrop.)

Ink and Steel: A Novel of the Promethean Age and Hell and Earth: A Novel of the Promethean Age by Elizabeth Bear
Two-part story of magic in the Elizabethan court, featuring Christopher Marlowe and Will Shakespeare.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows ed. by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers
Death of the Author by Gilbert Adair
Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
Diary of a Blood Donor by Mati Unt
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
A Quiet Adjustment by Benjamin Markovits
Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Slumberland by Paul Beatty
Two Marriages by Phillip Lopate
Valfierno: The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa by Martin Caparros
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection ed. by Gardner Dozois

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Put on a Happy Face by Charles Strouse
I've seen three raves for this Broadway memoir from the man who wrote Annie and Bye Bye Birdie. Booklist: refreshingly "free of ego and bitterness."

Harlan Ellison's Watching by Harlan Ellison (intro by Leonard Maltin)
SF writer Ellison wrote film criticism?

We're Going to See the Beatles!: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There by Garry Berman
Yes, what exactly was going through the minds of those crowds of screaming kids we see in the famous footage? I've actually pondered that a few times.

Touch Me, I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard by Tom Reynolds
That title says it all, except that it's a follow-up to the similar I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard.

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin
New book from the writer of This Is Your Brain on Music.

LITERATURE
Catching Life by the Throat: How to Read Poetry and Why ed. by Josephine Hart
The Poem I Turn To: Actors and Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them ed. by Jason Shinder
Both books comes with cd recordings of interesting people reading poems, including (in the former case) actors like Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Stevenson and (in the latter) Lili Taylor, Mary Louise Parker and many more.

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot by Anna R. Beer
I had no idea this year was the Milton quadricentenary (December 20, 1608). Well, hell. Get the party started early, I say.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq by Fernando Baez
A history of book destruction which apparently includes a chapter devoted to fictional bibliocasts (there, I learned a new word today).

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman
I might just be an expert on this subject. Still, I'm betting the authors have some more useful advice.

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant
Roald Dahl, some sort of undercover spy? Apparently. (Though I think I've just exaggerated a bit.)

The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War by David Lebedoff
A slim double-biography that has contrasted its two prestigious subjects to acclaim so far in the review process.

White Heat : The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
Study of a notable friendship between two literary figures, from the author of the acclaimed Hawthorne: A Life.

1001 Books for Every Mood by Hallie Ephron
The burgeoning readers advisory field sees another entry - sounds like an interesting browse.

HISTORY and POLITICS
The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank
Few books have been as profitably debated as Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, and his new book is garnering excellent notices so far.

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells
Great reviews so far, for this book that promises to change our minds about those mysterious centuries - apparently, we've been biased by the Roman point of view.

SCIENCE
Upgrade Me: Our Amazing Journey to Human 2.0 by Brian Clegg
Looking forward to the day you could live forever and upload data like a computer?

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst
A study of alternative medicines that determines they are - guess what? - pretty much worthless. Oprah, get *these* guys on your show.

The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the Hype about Your Health by Robert Davis
The more I read about health claims, the more I'm convinced that most of the coverage we read (even of academic studies) is more light than heat.

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel Gardner
I'm always tempted by books that sound like Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, though this one is coming at our irrational fears from a completely different angle.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
Dark matter, cold fusion, life on Mars, the placebo effects and other scientific quandaries are considered.

MISC.
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling
A psychology professor looks at our relationship to our possessions, an interesting topic well worth some contemplation, seeing as how advertising constantly manipulates our desires along these lines.

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken by Daniel Mendelsohn
A collection of essays mostly from the New York Review of Books, covering books, movies, and plays as diverse as Middlesex, The Glass Menagerie and Kill Bill.

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt
This is going to make me sound humor-impaired, I know, but if you really think about it, aren't jokes strange? Do you suppose any other species has them?

Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex ed. by Ellen Sussman
From what I understand, this is not a reference book at all but an anthology of fine contemporary writers (including Pagan Kennedy and Jonathan Ames) writing on sex-themed topics like "bisexuality," "kissing," and "adultery."

Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy
It's not actually all about sex (I know, drat) but is a collection of the writer's essays and articles. Sounds like an interesting collection.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
Weirdly, this book is one of the more hyped books of the season. Will readers go for it? With gas prices being what they are, perhaps it's a good time to stay home and just read about driving.

Collections of Nothing by William Davies King
The New Yorker reviewed this book by a man who collects, well, junk, essentially: cereal boxes, envelope linings, illustrations snipped from dictionaries. Apparently King mixes memoir with a discussion of his collection and his reasons for collecting. As I'm rather fascinated by the collecting impulse, this sounds very interesting to me.

The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude by P. M. Forni
I'm not the type to read self-help books, but this sounds really useful.

In Defense of Lost Causes and
Violence by Slavoj Zizek
You have to admire a modern philosopher whose ideas and style are so compelling, so interesting (it helps that he engages pop culture fully) that he actually sells books, not to mention movie tickets. Have you seen A Pervert's Guide to Cinema? Good stuff.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum
Best Thought, Worst Thought: On Art, Sex, Work and Death by Don Paterson
Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer
Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto
Drink : A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately
Ernie: An Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine
Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick
Fruitless Fall : The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis by Rowan Jacobsen
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland
I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire
I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like : A Comprehensive Compilation of History's Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes by Mardy Grothe
Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works by Jonathan M. Weiss
The Liberal Hour: The 1960s and the Remaking of American Life by Robert S. Weisbrot and G. Calvin MacKenzie
The Not So Invisible Woman by Suzanne Portnoy
Notebooks 1951-1959, Vol. 3 by Albert Camus
Ousmane Sembene: Interviews ed. by Annett Busch and Max Annas
Polanski by Christopher Sandford
Sam Peckinpah: Interviews ed. by Kevin J. Hayes
A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Watching Television by Jeff Alexander
Visual History of the English Bible: The Tumultuous Tale of the World's Bestselling Book by Donald L. Brake
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by The Waiter
Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes (great cover!)

Of Gay Interest:

The Screwed up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson
Gay YA lit seems to be very popular with lots of people today, young and old, men and women, gay and not.

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet by Leslie Jordan
A coworker very much enjoyed this campy memoir filled with bon mots and Southern wit. From the guy who played Will & Grace's Beverly Leslie character, aka Karen Walker's arch-nemesis.

Also Noteworthy:
All I Could Bare : My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. by Craig Seymour
Anything Goes: The Autobiography by John Barrowman with Carole Barrowman
Band Fags! by Frank Anthony Polito
Closer to Fine by Meri Weiss
Every Frat Boy Wants It by Todd Gregory
Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Is Gay by Troy Johnson
The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York by Patricia Cline Cohen, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz and Timothy J. Gilfoyle
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg ed. by Bill Morgan
Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America by Thomas Foster (afterword by John D'Emilio)
Next in Line: Poems by Christopher Schmidt
The Palace of Varieties by James Lear
Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails by Arnaldo Cruz-Malave
Schooled in Murder by Mark Richard Zubro
Sex, Love, and Fashion: A Memoir of a Male Model by Bruce Hulse
Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret
Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson
Worshipping Walt - The Whitman Principles by Michael Robertson
Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography by Bertram J. Cohler

Of Chicago Interest:

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz
How many novels and film have been inspired by Leopold and Loeb's crimes? Will their story still sell as true crime/history?

Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up by Rick Lax
Memoir of law school (DePaul).

The Color of Light: Watercolors by Winslow Homer by Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm
Catalogue of the recent Art Institute exhibit.

Also Noteworthy:
Debunked!: Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century by Richard Roeper
Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg
The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey
Gunmetal Black by Daniel Serrano
Good People by Marcus Sakey

Graphic Work:

Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, Vol. 2 ed. by Ivan Brunetti
I like Brunetti's classic-comics meets warped underground comics sensibility, and I'm eager to see what he's compiled here.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
It's been a while since a graphic novel has really grabbed me, but this one is getting great reviews and looks like a winner.

Also Noteworthy:
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dan Haspiel
The Complete Peanuts 1967 To 1968 by Charles M. Schulz (Introduction by John Waters!)
Ex-Machina (Deluxe) by Brian K. Vaughan
Holmes: Haydn's Head by Omaha Perez
Shmobots by Adam Rifkin and Les Toil

Shortlists, Retrospectives, Appreciations, and Bug Porn

2008-07-14T21:09:00.006-05:00

Have you heard? Missing footage from the film classic Metropolis has been discovered. Cool!

"Give us back our shortlists" - in a nutshell, this columnist chides the current Frank O'Connor award jurors for skipping the shortlist stage and simply announcing the winner, Jhumpa Lahiri. I agree. I'm not a big Lahiri fan, but that's beside the point. I don't begrudge her winning (though does the only short story writer to top the bestseller list in ages really need this little award?), but I do think a shortlist should have been announced, and I don't want to see this become a trend. I'm the kind of reader who looks at shortlists and finds them useful in deciding what to read. The top 5 in any literary finals are generally strong, and there's usually something on any such list that I just needed a bit of encouragement to try. Somehow, I think the odds are much lower that a list of one will inspire me to read. OR. TO. BUY.

Two articles On the films of Hal Ashby: there's a retrospective of his work going on out West. Wow, that's a series I'd love to see. I'd never heard of The Landlord in particular, and it looks fantastic. The rest are on dvd, and I just may screen my own series at home if the series doesn't come to town.

I agree with NY Magazine: that was one delicious takedown in the Times a few weeks back. I usually resist reviews that are so nasty, but it just so happens that I recently picked up another book (Choke) by the target, erm, author in question, Chuck Palahniuk, hoping for an enjoyable if pulpy bit of subversiveness (in other words, exactly what the book's advertised to deliver) and found it so mediocre, so contrived and strained that I had to put it down, which I rarely do. So I was fairly cheering Lucy Ellman on, even though I still kind of wish Palahniuk well in his mission. Oh, man. She included Alice Sebold in her list of overrated hacks. Joy! I'm not the only one, hallelujah! This is one mean review to savor.

On his blog, continuing to clear out his drawers, Jonathan Rosenbaum posts an appreciation of Susan Sontag from 2005. (Hmm, small coincidence: Sontag also wrote the intro for the novella I just finished, Pedro Paramo.) So far, what I've found most interesting here is a glancing reference to the debates which went on in the 60s about whether film could be considered an art form: "What impressed me most in her writing was ... and the fact that all four articles treated film as part of art and thought without any sort of self-consciousness or special pleading—-an approach that seemed virtually unprecedented at the time." I came across references to this moment in film history a few times last year while reading coverage of the deaths of Bergman and Antonioni, but this time it registered more consciously, made me stop and wonder: how strange that film should ever have been discriminated against in this way. I've taken it for granted at least since I was a teenager that film was as valid an art form as literature or theater. Then it occurred to me that perhaps a similar debate has been going on in the last ten years towards comics/ "graphic novels," whatever we're calling them. Perhaps a symptom of these cultural growing pains has been the struggle to name the art form. (The title of JR's piece, btw, alludes to Goodbye, South, Goodbye, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, championed by Sontag.) [More Rosenbaum: on Marcel L'Herbier? Who? And on Tati's Trafic, coming soon from Criterion.]

"Three gay and lesbian fiction gems" by Michael Upchurch (who also recently wrote an enjoyable appreciation of Guy Maddin's latest). Enjoyed the McCartney, and I kind of want to read the Maguire.

Are movie critics out-of-touch elitists? And, besides, don't bad movies dominate at the box office, anyway? Apparently not.

The stupid newspapers may be chopping book coverage (right, because you can't make money selling books to the freaks who read newspapers in print), but NPR apparently understands what its audience wants. (I'm not really a big fan of Jessa Crispin, though, I must admit.) Hey, Chicago Tribune, take a lesson as you redesign your paper - don't cut your book coverage, expand it, improve it.

"The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?" Or is this a case of silly alarmism?

Looking for something good to read? Check out the Telegraph's "50 best ever summer holiday books" or the Guardian's travel-themed selection, "Friends for faraway places," featuring Dave Eggers on Chicago books, David Mitchell on Japanese books, etc.

"10 Ways to Become a Better Film Critic" - Who is Evan Derrick? This is brilliant.

A little Wikipedia observation. So I was looking up playwright Brian Friel a couple weeks ago and came across startling evidence of a battle among its contributors over the content. This is what it said in the subsection on the play "Molly Sweeney," capitalization exactly as it was:

Molly Sweeney (1993) enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but it attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play comprised of a series of monologues. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy her life--Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision is restored, and Dr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. Richard Pine has written in depth on the relationship of his play to Oliver Sacks' work and the controversy that forced Friel to recognize Sacks' work as an inspiration for the play. THIS IS COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS - I HAVE NOT WRITTEN ANYTHING ABOUT 'THE CONTROVERSY THAT FORCED FRIEL TO RECOGNIZE SACKS' WORK' - NOT LEAST BECAUSE I AM NOT AWARE OF ANY SUCH CONTROVERSY. WHO IS THE AUTHOR OF THIS ERRONEOUS STATEMENT?

And this is how it reads today:

Molly Sweeney (1993) enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but it attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play comprised of a series of monologues. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy her life--Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision is restored, and Dr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. In a note in the programme of the 1996 Broadway production Friel says that the story was inspired in part by Oliver Sacks's To See and Not See.

You hear about these things, but I'd never really come across such a good example before of how the site is constantly in flux. I read a good point the other day about how WP (the people's Encyclopedia) is not appropriate for citation, not because the information is bad or can't be trusted (that's the route the argument usually takes into heated territory) but simply because it probably won't be the same when you check back. That does kind of turn the whole exercise of citation into an absurdity, doesn't it? You may as well just write in the footnote of your paper, "Well, this is what someone on the internet said on such-and-such a date and time.)

I know it's made the rounds already, but if you haven't seen Isabella Rossellini's funny "Green Porno" series, you should take a peek. Isabella, you are a goddess.

Finally, the movie "Ben & Arthur" is currently at #8 on the imdb bottom 100, and you really have to watch the trailer to appreciate just what's gone wrong with gay independent filmmaking - or perhaps independent filmmaking in general. (Or wait: maybe it's an intentional satire, and it's actually wickedly brilliant and...and...)

Tonys, Insane Grammar, and Miss Piggy's Soul Laid Bare

2008-06-12T22:39:00.003-05:00

Terry Teachout, psyching me up for the Tonys:

From the Broadway run of "August: Osage County" and the Off Broadway transfer of "Adding Machine" to the regional-theater Tony awarded to Chicago Shakespeare Theater, this was the season when East Coast playgoers found out for themselves that theater in Chicago is as good as it gets. Now comes yet another Windy City stunner to hammer home the point. The Court Theatre's small-scale production of "Carousel," co-produced with New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre, has moved from Chicago to its second home in Connecticut. If you were impressed by Lincoln Center Theater's handsome hit version of "South Pacific," prepare to be floored: This "Carousel," staged by Charles Newell, the Court's artistic director, is the best Rodgers and Hammerstein revival I've ever seen.

Earlier, he wrote:

The truth, of course, is that the real artistic action is to be found Off Broadway and in America's regional theaters. One of the finest of the latter, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is receiving this year's Regional Theatre Tony Award, the sole occasion on which the Tony nominators deign to acknowledge what everybody who cares about theater already knows, which is that Broadway today is less a center of serious artistic endeavor than a theme park for well-heeled tourists. You won't hear anyone saying that on June 15 -- not into a microphone, anyway.

Amen. And woo-hoo!

I'm embarassed to admit how long it took me to wrap my feeble brain around this. It did eventually make sense: ""Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo."

One reason I don't buy from Amazon (though I do patronize their partners for used books) is that I don't want to end up with a monopoly. Another (from David Unowsky):

Once, I gave this advice when speaking to a group of self-published authors. One of the authors said she didn’t know any booksellers to talk to. “What should I do?” she asked. I suggested that when she goes to a bookstore, she could strike up a conversation with one of the booksellers there and ask them for their opinion about her book idea. She then said that she never goes to a bookstore. “I do all my book shopping on Amazon.com,” she replied. In that case, I suggested that she should place her book for sale with Amazon and have her reading there. “But how would a reading on Amazon work?” she asked. “Doh!” said I.

Muse gagged over this news, and while I see no need for a remake, I actually think that if it must be done, Knightley is a good choice.

Short Stack is addictive. I really liked this recent one: Five Novels That Take on Real-Life Historical Puzzles

I should really read something by Penelope Fitzgerald before I'm the last person who hasn't.

Who would have thought Michel Houellebecq's life could contain more controversy? Sarkozy must be grateful.

Taking a childhood icon or toy and enacting something sexual is a cliche of adult play, but somehow this video works brilliantly. The footage is so well chosen and edited that I'm tempted to make a crazy statement like that it rises to the level of double explication (of the famous Miss Piggy character and of the singer Peaches, who I've never had a use for before). Warning: lyrics are not worksafe.

New Book Roundup: March/April 2008

2008-05-16T16:53:00.010-05:00

There was more in the way of interesting fiction this time out, and the most promising work of nonfiction is devoted to the topic. Plenty of good books to tide us over until Fall.

TOP PICKS

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
I suppose consensus is ultimately boring and probably encourages me to rebel anyway, but sometimes it's frustrating when the advance buzz is polarized between (to paraphrase) "best thing wot he ever wrote" and "utter tripe."

How Fiction Works by James Wood
Wood is such a celebrated critic that there's already a sizeable backlash against him (and rightly so, to some extent), but this book has received some of the best reviews of any book so far this year. It aims to keep the company of E.M. Forster on your bookshelf.

Breath by Tim Winton
Why can't Tim Winton reach an American audience? He's wonderful! I can't wait for his latest.

FICTION

NOVELS

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
If you haven't already heard about this book, you will. A Soviet war hero must track down a killer in gulag-era USSR (circa 1953). I smell a hit.

The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford
Mostly good reviews for this Edgar-winner's latest. Kirkus proclaimed: "For those of you--and you know who you are--who think the indispensable element for good genre fiction is good writing, this is not to be missed."

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Wonderful, glowing reviews. Set on a northern farm with a plot involving a fictional breed of dogs, this book has been called, unlikely as it seems, "[a] literary thriller with commercial legs,...stunning debut ...bound to be a bestseller" (Publishers Weekly).

Exiles by Ron Hansen
Novels that take famous literary figures as their subjects are fairly common, but this one focused on Gerard Manley Hopkins sounds like a cut above the usual fare.

The James Boys: A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers by Richard Liebmann-Smith
What if Henry and William were brothers to Frank and Jesse? What if a hook was enough to make a good novel? OK, that's rude. I should give this a chance. Does sound clever.

The Open Door by Elizabeth Maguire
Fictional memoir of the very real 19C writer Constance Fenimore Woolson (popular in her day and, yes, related to that other Fenimore) and the unusual relationship she had with writer Henry James.

Personal Days by Ed Park
In one of those oddly common instances where two writers seem to have unknowingly trysted with the same muse, Park's novel is a tale of young office workers narrating their story in the collective third person. If you don't know what book I'm comparing this to, you've been living under a rock and need serious literary help. Apparently they're quite different in execution, and this book already has its champions. (Consider: many of those who actually watched the film Infamous actually preferred it to the much-lauded Capote.)

Hotel Crystal by Olivier Rolin
Shaping up to be one of the notable books in translation this year. Inspired by Perec, compared to Calvino. OK, Dalkey, you have my attention.

The Sister by Poppy Adams
The reviews are still trickling in, but there's been a steady flow of good buzz for this debut novel. Lepidoptery and literature, hmm, seems like that could work.

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
This will no doubt be an especially big book here in the Windy City where the author lives.

SHORT STORIES
Intercourse: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
God help me, I love a good gimmick. After a collection of very short stories imagining the final moments of people who were being beheaded (!), Butler this time out imagines several people in the middle of a much more pleasant activity. (Well, generally, one hopes.)

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Two ed. by Jonathan Strahan
"Jesus Christ, Reanimator"?? That sounds so bizarre I may have to take a peek.

Size of the World by Joan Silber
I've never read anything by Silber, but apparently this is a typical form for her short fiction: minor characters in one story become narrators in later stories. PW called this "magnificent" and the stories sound like they cover a real range of settings.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 by Laura Furman
Considering how bad Stephen King's choices for last year's Best American Short Stories was, I'm a bit more likely to check out the competition this year. (I know, it's not a competition - they're both wonderful venerable series. I do love them both. I'm sorry.)

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Is there a literary renaissance going on? It certainly seems like there's been an increasing audience for fiction about Africa here in the U.S. (many of these authors seem to have been born there, at least). This collection of stories received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and does not focus on one country in particular.

SF/FANTASY
Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten by Thomas M. Disch
"The density of ideas packed into this short book is as impressive as Disch's mastery of his craft." (PW) - that just about accurately describes the one book I have read by Disch, Camp Concentration.

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
Historical fantasy portraying Elizabethan court as well as the parallel goings-on of the court of England's fae. That sounds fun to me - what are the chances this is any good?

Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst
In the vein of Watership Down comes this tale, the first of a trilogy, set in the time when wolves first became domesticated - told from the pov of a wolf character. Strong reviews.

Steampunk ed. by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
"A superb introduction to one of the most popular and inventive subgenres in science fiction" (Publishers Weekly). I'd be particularly keen to read the Michael Chabon story. Steampunk is popping up all over - there was even a fashion article about it in the Times last week.

The Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins
From an acclaimed Australian fantasy writer, a new series set a thousand years ago in Russia.

More Noteworthy Fiction:
The Marriage of True Minds by Stephen Evans
Enlightenment by Maureen Freely (Orhan Pamuk's translator)
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
The Writing Class by Jincy Willett
A Vengeful Longing by R. N. Morris
Julien Parme by Florian Zeller
My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield
Wicked City by Ace Atkins
Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan
Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams
The Voyage of the Short Serpent by Bernard du Bucheron

NONFICTION

ARTS and MUSIC
Michelangelo Antonioni: Interviews by Bert Cardullo
On the subject of those maddeningly impenetrable films, I'd like very much to know what that brilliant man had to say for himself.

Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You -- For Better or Worse by David S. Cohen
Case studies of a couple dozen films and the story of how they made it from the page to the "big" (or nowadays sometimes portable) screen.

Short History of Film by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Deadly dull or an interesting browse? That is the question.

LITERATURE
The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman
Even the reputedly virtuous pastime of reading can be taken too far, according to Brottman who refreshingly argues against some of the more ridiculous claims made about the benefits of reading. Sounds like a good companion to How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. Honestly, if we stopped talking about reading as if it were a duty akin to recycling or donating to public radio and started remembering how dangerous and exciting it can be, there'd be no need to worry about literacy.

House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family by Paul Fisher
What is it about those James men that keeps readers coming back for more?

The Plot Against Pepys by James D. Long
Why was Samuel Pepys once arrested and held in the Tower of London on suspicion of treason?

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay by Louis Begley
Not quite your standard biography - and written by a novelist (About Schmidt).

HISTORY
The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn by Solomon Volkov
Sounds like a major work on a fascinating topic. Or maybe I'm still under Tom Stoppard's spell.

London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London by Leo Hollis
On the transformation of London into a modern metropolis.

Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres by Ruth Brandon
An antidote to the Mary Poppins archetype?

The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America by Maury Klein
Another notable book on that lively subject of the cultural history of technology.

POLITICS
Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter by Richard Shenkman
Shenkman and Susan Jacoby should really sit down and have a beer together - they seem like soul mates. And though I hate to sound elitist, I suspect they're on to something.

The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington by David Sirota
Sirota's a good blogger and his writing usually makes sense to me.

Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Are we on the verge of a huge political realignment? Or is this another pseudo-profound bandying of generational thinking?

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich
Latest collection from Ehrenreich, many pieces apparently derived from her blog (quite a good one, might I add).

The Political Mind: The Science Behind American Politics or, Why You Can't Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century View of the Mind by George Lakoff
Sounds like a continuing elaboration of the ideas Lakoff put forth in Don't Think of an Elephant.

MISC.
The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book by John Kaltner, Joel Kilpatrick and Steven McKenzie
Now we're talking. I might even sit in a hard-backed pew for this author talk.

Sway: The Hidden Forces That Influence Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman
Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoleoni
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and how Complex Things Can Be Made Simple) by Jeffrey Kluger
Four more books in the vein of Freakonomics and/or Malcolm Gladwell's books. A person could devote a whole blog to such books, it almost seems.

Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries) by Jared Bernstein
A primer on economics for us regular folks.

Moral Clarity : A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists by Susan Neiman
Neiman champions a resurrection of Enlightenment ideals, something that shouldn't sound as crazy as it does.

More Noteworthy Nonfiction:
100 Essential Modern Poems by Women ed. by Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton
The Adventures of Herge: Creator of Tintin by Michael Farr
Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
Credit and Blame by Charles Tilly
From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video by Joshua M. Greenberg
Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth by David Browne
Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof
Hubert's Freaks : The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus by Gregory Gibson
Human Goodness by Yi-Fu Tuan
Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) by Douglas Brown
The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It by Gigi Durham (Miley Cyrus, anyone?)
The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology ed. by Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland
The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi by Aram Roston
Melville: The Making of the Poet by Hershel Parker
Metro Stop Paris: An Underground History of the City of Light by Gregor Dallas
Napoleon: The Path to Power by Philip Dwyer
Official Filthy Rich Handbook by Christopher Tennant
Dreaming Up America by Russell Banks
Painter and the Savages: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America by Miles Harvey
Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin
Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe by Arianna Huffington
Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano by Katie Hafner
The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad by John Stape
The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews by Neal Karlen
Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke by Russell Peterson
Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith by Suzanne Strempek Shea
What's Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination by Ricky L. Jones
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Of Gay Interest:

The Answer Is Always Yes by Monica Ferrell
Mixed reviews, but it looks as though this author is one to watch, at least. And ok, I love the cover. And the title.

Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever by Joel Derfner
OK, sometimes a title comes along and just makes me smile.

King of Shadows by Aaron Shurin
Collection of 20 essays by a poet but the phrase that got my attention in the PW review was "meditations on how the difference between Shakespeare's Oberon and Puck shaped his identity as a gay man." Say what? OK, I'm curious.

Mahu Fire: A Hawai'ian Mystery by Neil S. Plakcy
An openly gay detective stars in this recent series (which began with last year's Mahu Surfer).

Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeanette Howard Foster by Joanne Passet
I have to confess I'd never heard of Jeanette Howard Foster before, but her story sounds important.

Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad by Bob Morris
You've gotta love that cover - and the premise.

Also Noteworthy:
Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath by Andrew Holleran
The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable
Thinking Straight by Robin Reardon
Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles by Thomas Glave (Michelle Cliff's story singled out by PW)
Actress by Elizabeth Sims
Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag by Michael Tonello
Tranny: Boys Will Be Girls by Fiona Mallratte

Of Chicago Interest:

Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It by Julia Keller
Not at all what I would have expected from the Tribune's prized cultural critic.
Also Noteworthy:
In the Wind by Barbara Fister
Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement by Harper Barnes
Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville by Michelle R. Boyd

Graphic Work:

Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings by Craig Yoe
Yes, many of those venerable Sunday comic strip artists occasionally dabbled in naughtier fare to entertain themselves.

Chocolate Cheeks: A Yikes! Collection by Steven Weissman
Weissman's characters are hilarious, his sensibility is perverse. Can't wait for this new collection.

Also Noteworthy:
Popeye Vol. 2: ''Well Blow Me Down!'' by E. C. Segar
Krazy and Ignatz 1941-1942: ''A Ragout of Raspberries'' by George Herriman
Y: The Last Man: VOL 10 Whys and Wherefores by Brian K. Vaughan

Joel McCrea and the Bird of Paradise

2008-05-11T21:11:00.006-05:00

Muse complained recently that the blog isn't sexy enough. A fair point, actually. Well, I don't know if she'll consider this a step in the right direction, but I've been meaning to mention an old movie I recently watched called Bird of Paradise. Directed by King Vidor and starring the great Joel McCrea, I was quite impressed by its pre-Code sexuality (1932). Hardly a great movie, but it did remind me of several other films, most especially: the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, for their bold fantasies of sexual liberation in "primitive" settings; to the far superior Tabu (1931, the previous year), another story set in the South Seas; and to George Cukor's Girls About Town (also 1931), a terribly underappreciated gem of a film also starring Joel McCrea in a story that requires him to take off his clothes and dive in the water. (Not on dvd, to my knowledge.)

Joel McCrea is one of my favorite actors, and it's said that he was a good guy through and through, something you don't hear about actors/actresses one admires. I've also enjoyed his work in: The More the Merrier, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan's Travels, Foreign Correspondent, and Stars in My Crown.

Bird of Paradise, I hasten to add, is a mediocre narrative but it has some beautiful imagery, some lovely moments. And for anyone who finds McCrea handsome, it's a particular treat. The film co-starred Dolores del Rio, a Mexican actress who became an international star and sex symbol (and also, apparently, an admirable person responsible for significant acts of charity). At any rate, yes, this film pretty much had one concern: sex. And what's wrong with that? (Click on images for larger versions.)

Joe McCrea as a sailor

McCrea dives in and emerges, following the playful maiden, a full two years before a similar racy (and beautiful) sequence in Tarzan and His Mate

Why is this captive smiling?

A game of "share the coconut milk"...or something.

And Delores Del Rio dancing (and no, that's not actually the start of the film):

Forthcoming film, Sarris, Ann Hornaday

2008-05-10T18:11:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to note I'm not the only one who loved Change of Address. Critic Scott Foundas did, too, and he brings good news from L.A.:

Writing about the festival last year, I had admiring words for Change of Address (Changement d’Adresse), the third feature by the 37-year-old actor-writer-director Emmanuel Mouret, who has been tagged by some critics as the most “Rohmerian” (as in French New Wave pioneer Eric) filmmaker of his generation, and who carries that potentially daunting burden gracefully with his witty, insightful portraits of hyperverbal, self-conscious young people falling in and out of love. So, it’s only natural that COLCOA has chosen to screen Mouret’s fourth film, Shall We Kiss? (Un Baiser S’il Vous Plaît), back-to-back with Rohmer’s latest — and reportedly last — feature, The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon). Set some 16 centuries apart in time and made by directors who are more than 50 years apart in age, the two films are nevertheless of a piece in their gentle probing of the eternal mysteries of attraction.

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The lovers in Shall We Kiss? likewise come to their pairings through generous amounts of destiny and happenstance. The movie begins in Nantes, where a chance encounter between a Parisian fabric designer (Julie Gayet) and a local art restorer (Michaël Cohen) leads to dinner, drinks and nearly to the titular meeting of the lips. But wait, the woman says — first, she must tell a cautionary tale about how a similarly innocent smooch created seismic shifts in the relationships of two other couples. That story then plays out in flashback, with the hangdog Mouret perfectly self-cast as a lovelorn schoolteacher who falls for his best female friend (Virginie Ledoyen), no matter that she’s happily married and he’s dating a beautiful stewardess (played by Change of Address’s ebulliently ditsy Frédérique Bel). I’ll say no more about how it all ends up, except that Mouret marries Rohmer’s visual lucidity and love of smart dialogue to the sort of screwball-comedy antics that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the films of Lubitsch or Hawks, and he does it all with a beguiling lightness of touch.

I'm putting Never Forever in the "maybe" category, depending on other reviews. O'Hehir seems to love it, but the film sounds like one of those cases of a filmmaker taking a sexy scenario and imbuing it with sadness so she can sell it to the respectable arthouse crowd. That routine is getting old.

Some advice from New York on which films to see in that touring fest of Romanian cinema that's arrived in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Some jerk who attacked the great Sunrise takes some ribbing on behalf of all his kind. (At least, that reading of this post gives me the most satisfaction.)

The "American Cinema" Anniversary Blog-a-Thon: a cool tribute to Andrew Sarris. That book is a bible to me. I'd grab it if my house were on fire.

Ann Hornaday was a finalist for the Pulitzer for criticism this year, and this piece ("My Career Has Fallen But It Can Get Up") nicely combines the smarts of a Gray Lady essayist with the fun pop culture game played (in its better moods) on the discussion boards of imdb (or the pages of Entertainment Weekly).

Lost; Ill Omens for the Hobbit; and Gay Science Breakthrough

2008-04-28T22:06:00.003-05:00

Gotta Love Des!

In the company of daytime soaps that have run for decades, Lost has one of the most complicated narratives ever written for the small screen. Its title accurately describes any poor sap who tries to tune in without having seen the show before. That's part of what makes this recap so funny. It claims to tell you everything you need to know in order to catch up to the show as of Season 4 Episode 8. I'm amused that it skips the entire "Tailies" storyline but includes every twist of the love triangle.

It obviously can't capture the whole narrative, but it does a surprisingly good job capturing the gist. And the just-bordering-on-satirical narrator, surprising in an official promo, is a refreshing alternative to the overly serious episode-length recap specials the show occasionally runs to help newbies.

The show certainly took some shaky turns in season three, but if it jumped the shark, it jumped back at the end. I've had a ball with it all along, and I've come to enjoy it for its outrageous plot twists. I don't expect an ending that explains everything - I just expect it to keep entertaining me, and running the occasional chills up my spine, which it has reliably done since the first episode. If it all adds up in the end, that's just icing on the cake.

*
Chicago's own beloved Music Box Theatre has entered the distribution game, which seems like a very smart move to me. Its first release, Tuya's Wedding, recently began an exclusive engagement at their "home base." The next film to be distributed will be French James Bond spoof OSS 177.

A spoilsport at Salon says Guillermo del Toro is a bad fit for The Hobbit and worries that Peter Jackson is going the worrisome way of George Lucas. I had the idea they were breaking the story into 2 parts, but this writer sees it differently. Yeeks:

And where did the brilliant idea to make a "Hobbit" sequel -- a movie that will presumably cover the 60-year gap between the stories told in "The Hobbit" and in "The Lord of the Rings" -- actually come from? If you read all the back-and-forth stories closely, it becomes clear that New Line executive Mark Ordesky at some point told Peter Jackson that the studio had acquired rights to make both "The Hobbit" and a sequel, presumably based on Tolkien's fragmentary back-story information about what happens in his fictional universe between the two novels. A less kind way of saying this is that any "Hobbit" sequel won't really be a Tolkien adaptation; Jackson and Walsh and Boyens and del Toro and Ordesky and, I don't know, some guy in the Warner Bros. lunch room will be making the shit up.

Vote on which opera you'd like to see Chicago Opera Theater do. OK, you have to wait until 2010, but it's still a nifty way to raise funds for a great company.

I just recently finished reading Alex Ross's excellent history of 20C music, in which I learned (among other things) that Copland wrote for Hollywood, and now Terry Teachout writes a column on that very topic: "Memo to every symphony orchestra in America: What are you waiting for?"

The indispensable David Pogue on combatting "vampire power" in your computer usage.

*
Via my un-hyperlinkable friend Audiophile, the funniest bit of satire I've seen in a long time: "Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene."

Where Are the Good Movies? Etc.

2008-04-20T20:46:00.003-05:00

This has been one of the worst seasons for new movies I can ever remember. A real drought. The strongest stuff I've seen lately has been older -- like, for example, Italian tv production The Best of Youth. Perhaps not since Brideshead Revisited have I seen such a powerful miniseries.

As far as new movies go, this is the first preview I've seen in a while that really grabbed me. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo in an adaptation of Saramago's Blindness (which I've not read), directed by Fernando Meirelles. I'm thinking this could be Children of Men good:

Also, some leads from the New Directors fest:

History and politics are never far from the minds of serious filmmakers, but there are notable attempts in New Directors to avoid polemics or sermons to the choir. Haiti ’s present poverty and colonial past underlie the vivid, dreamlike imagery in Michelange Quay’s “Eat for This Is My Body,” a fascinating Buñuelian puzzle of a film that forsakes narrative and argument altogether.

Perhaps the most overtly political film I saw was Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer,” which was also the most exuberantly entertaining, a dystopian fable of globalization disguised as a science-fiction adventure. Showing some of the manic inventiveness of Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales,” but with a hundred times more intellectual clarity and storytelling discipline, Mr. Rivera — a brilliant young director — takes his audience into a future of “aqua-terrorism” and cyberlabor that I wish I could dismiss as implausible.

Some aspects of Godfrey Cheshire’s “Moving Midway” may also seem unlikely. Who, apart from Werner Herzog, would think of loading an old North Carolina plantation house onto a truck and moving it away from encroaching strip malls and sprawling developments? Mr. Cheshire’s cousin, as it happens. But the relocation of the house is only one piece of this extraordinarily rich documentary, which takes up the agonies and ironies of Southern history with remarkable wit, empathy and learning.

And I'm cheered by news of The Secret of the Grain distribution from this Tribeca fest coverage:

To illustrate how vital the festival has become, consider “The Secret of the Grain,” a brilliant French film that won four Césars (the French Oscars), including best picture, earlier this year but languished without a distributor until recent weeks. It was belatedly picked up by IFC Films, which plans to show it at an unspecified time this year. That movie’s experience is an ominous example of how a film can reap acclaim all over the world and still find it almost impossible to be seen in the United States.

“The Secret of the Grain,” by the Tunisian-born French director Abdellatif Kechiche, depicts North African immigrants in Sète, a crumbling port town in Southern France. Its protagonist is a weary, divorced, impoverished 60-year-old shipyard worker whose fractured family comes together around his dream of opening a floating restaurant based on his former wife’s culinary specialty, fish couscous.
The film, which explores generational differences and psychological baggage within this extended family of émigrés, is an extraordinarily rich and human ensemble piece, filmed in a rough documentary style that draws you to the bosom of this boisterous clan to a degree that few movies ever do. Following “Games of Love and Chance,” Mr. Kechiche’s second film, which also won four Césars (including best film) in 2005, it establishes him as a major player in world cinema.

Alyson Books is changing hands.

Would you rather have more time off or more money? I'm not wealthy, but I side with the majority on that one.

I'm quite eagerly looking forward to Philip Roth's just announced 29th novel, due out in September.

Interesting editorial on the JK Rowling trial. I haven't been following all that closely, but I don't think she has a case. I'm disappointed in her decision to sue. Her previous charity books have done so well - should she really be worried about the competition? Maybe there's some point I'm missing.

Small Beer offers free downloads of some of its books.

"Cinema's worst director?" Ugh.

This MoveOn video about the Iraq War is worth a viewing.

Musto a Must, Klawans on Cronenberg, Saul Bass does Star Wars

2008-03-31T20:20:00.008-05:00

I love Marilyn Monroe. And I love that Michael Musto has spoofed the Lohan as Monroe photo shoot. You really owe to yourself to check out the slide show if you haven't seen these.

Wikipedia is struggling to figure out its economics. Perhaps it should consult itself? Kidding. I respect that they're trying to avoid that route.

Andrew Bird is blogging for the Times about songwriting.

A.S. Byatt believes the Orange Prize is sexist.

Sarah Michelle Gellar will star in an adaptation of Paulo Coelho's monster international hit, Veronika Decides to Die. Meanwhile, the character Buffy, living a graphic life happily without Gellar, thankyouverymuch, has had a lesbian experience.

Ray Pride has a link to supercritic Stuart Klawans' consideration of Cronenberg's very...Cronenbergian short "At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World," his contribution to Chacun son cinema, which I'm quite interested in seeing.

Yardley on Roget:

You're likely to find a copy of Roget's Thesaurus or one of its innumerable derivatives in the reference library of anyone who writes English well and -- perhaps more revealing -- in the library of anyone who writes English badly. It is at once an immensely useful compilation of synonyms that enables writers to identify the exact words they need, and a crutch leaned upon by journalists, speechwriters, graduate students, academics and others who sometimes are more concerned with sounding learned than with actually being learned.

For precisely this second reason the thesaurus has been a source of controversy ever since Peter Mark Roget brought out his first edition of 1,000 copies in May 1852. Though Roget's motives in compiling the thesaurus were scholarly and, so Joshua Kendall argues in this biography, therapeutic, some critics were quick to point out, accurately, that a book such as this encourages laziness and glibness rather than diligence and precision. My father, an elegant prose stylist, regarded Roget's with scorn and tried to discourage his students, not to mention his children, from using it. As for myself, I find it an immensely useful tool for recalling words that have slipped from my totally fallible memory, but I like to think -- I certainly hope -- that I do not use it in the service of mere pretentiousness.

I love this video. Someone envisioned what Star Wars would have looked liked if the opening credits had been designed by Saul Bass. (via Blue Kitchen, a cool blog I came across today)