Recent Books Columns

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Monday, August 17 2009

Is Alyse Myers’ Life More Important Than Yours?

By Michael Antman

Ding dong! Ding dong! Another dysfunctional-family memoir bearing a terrible secret is at the door!

(more Read Only Memory)

Monday, August 10 2009

Your Brain is the New Factory Floor

By Rob Horning

"[M]ore and more, 'production' -- that word my fellow economists have worked over for generations -- has become interior to the human mind rather than set on a factory floor..."

(more Marginal Utility)

Thursday, August 6 2009

They Killed John Henry but They Won’t Kill Me

By Andrew Gilstrap

In these days of economic turmoil, massive job losses, and corporate profiteering, you'd expect to hear more rewritings of the John Henry legend.

(more Field Studies)

Thursday, July 30 2009

Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto

By Rodger Jacobs

Dylan’s beautifully simple ballad captures the paradoxical fear of and longing for death that is the hallmark of Wurlitzer’s narratives and what lurks at the heart of the human experience.

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Wednesday, July 29 2009

We All End Up in Diapers: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

By Jennifer Makowsky

Comparing the book to the film, it’s as if Fitzgerald laid just the foundation, and from that Roth built a multi-storied house.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Wednesday, July 22 2009

Hail to the Thief, Again?

By George A. Reisch and Brandon W. Forbes

Thom Yorke’s thoughts about political power are in good company. Great theorists of power and justice agree: “you do it to yourself”.

(more Pop Goes Philosophy)

Monday, July 20 2009

It Ain’t Hard to Tell: The Legacy of ‘Illmatic’

By Quentin B. Huff

The "half-man, half-amazin'", Nas' persona is part myth and part "everyday kid" from the Queensbridge projects.

(more Busted Headphones)

Friday, July 17 2009

The Audacity of Certain Black Ballers

By Mark Reynolds

The distance we’ve come from Jackie Robinson hawking Chock Full o’Nuts coffee in the ‘50s, and black A-list jocks hawking virtually anything under the sun today, is astounding.

(more Negritude 2.0)

Tuesday, July 7 2009

Truth Against Truth: The Work of Adrian Tomine

By Monte Williams

Tomine has a gift for capturing body language and facial expressions -- his characters often say more in a silent panel than most say with an entire word balloon.

(more Lowbrow Literati)

Wednesday, June 24 2009

Snagged by Bishop—Hook, Line & Sinker

By Chris Justice

Like the lakes we fish in, there are great treasures lurking in those depths, and great depth lurking in those treasures.

(more The Tackle Box)

Tuesday, June 23 2009

Augusten Burroughs: The View Through a Saltine Cracker

By Michael Antman

As a memoirist, Burroughs is highly skilled at the art of aestheticized self-pity.

(more Read Only Memory)

Wednesday, June 17 2009

Out of Tune and ‘Amplified’

By Rodger Jacobs

As George Orwell said, “Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, even if it is only a passionate dislike.”

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Monday, June 8 2009

Blood Meridian: The Last of the True

By Andrew Gilstrap

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian has been called unfilmable, but that doesn't stop Ben Nichols from getting ahead of the game and crafting a worthy soundtrack.

(more Field Studies)

Tuesday, June 2 2009

Is the ‘New York Times’ Tracking Porn Sales Now?

By Shaun Huston

That “comics” persists in connoting “pulp” and “graphic novels” implies something “literary” is purely a matter of convention, and is not because those are the inherent meanings or implications of the terms.

(more Worlds in Panels)

Friday, May 29 2009

Depression 2.0: Sunday in Kerouac Alley

By Rodger Jacobs

Scott Thorson rang, flat broke and disabled, in chronic, horrendous pain from a botched murder attempt and an even more botched plastic surgery, hoping that I would serve as his conduit for another lucrative laundry airing.

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Tuesday, May 26 2009

Let the Right One In, But Only the Right One

By Jennifer Makowsky

Lindqvist’s book and Alfredson’s film adaptation both convey a sweet, dark version of puppy love. We don’t need the American remake.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Thursday, May 21 2009

The Myth of the Rational Market

By Rob Horning

How silly we were to believe that investors always acted with predictable rapacity and efficiency.

(more Marginal Utility)

Wednesday, May 13 2009

Obama is The Boss

By George Reisch & Russell Anderson

What Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen share is an understanding that real life happens on the ground, regardless of the hot ideological winds blowing through Crawford or Washington D.C. or talk radio.

(more Pop Goes Philosophy)

Tuesday, May 5 2009

The Geeks Have Inherited the Earth -– and They Rule It

By Glenn McDonald

Geek humor is rooted in a commanding pop cultural and scientific literacy and deployed with a sense of casual authority which one ... must ... obey.

(more PopShots)

Monday, May 4 2009

Fighting the Flu

By Marco Lanzagorta

The mobilization of the military to control the spread of the current outbreak of a rare strain of the swine flu in Mexico City is right out of Stephen King’s The Stand.

(more Dread Reckoning)

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