Recent Books Reviews

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Friday, October 23 2009

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

By Shyam K. Sriram

This book should be essential reading to students in Iran and across the world who need a manual on student activism.

Thursday, October 22 2009

Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow

By Christopher Guerin

In this book, E. L. Doctorow is like a great magician trying to make a monumental illusion out of a street corner shell game, just to prove that he can.

Wednesday, October 21 2009

Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater by Eric P. Nash

By Oliver Ho

Nash offers a study of kamishibai's influence on modern manga, and how Japanese comics differ from American ones (as well as answering a common question: "What's with the wide eyes?").

Tuesday, October 20 2009

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

By Zachary Houle

This follow-up to The Time Traveler's Wife netted the author a cool $5 million. Was the money worth it?

Monday, October 19 2009

The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side by Jim DeRogatis

By Craig Carson

Great visuals aside, this collection is hit-and-miss. Like any textual description of music that falls short of actually hearing it, the words can't keep up with the images.

Friday, October 16 2009

Red Star Over Russia by David King

By Josh Indar

At first glance, one could easily dismiss this as a work of commie propaganda porn, a celebration and sensualization of images that were created specifically to mask the repression of a failing ideology.

Thursday, October 15 2009

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

By Christopher Guerin

Kazuo Ishiguro’s first collection of short fiction, though more grounded in everyday experience than his recent novels, is tinged with his sense of the strange and sad, and, new for him, the humorous.

Wednesday, October 14 2009

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

By M.M. Wolfe

While book theft is not uncommon, John Charles Gilkey is unusual in that his theft appeared motivated not by money (he sold few of his spoils) but rather an overwhelming compulsion to own the books.

Tuesday, October 13 2009

How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall

By Vikram Johri

This tips its hat to Hall’s well-regarded ability to craft sentences of near-perfect beauty, without really being a novel in the conventional sense.

Sunday, October 11 2009

Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music by Ryan Edwardson

By Stuart Henderson

Edwardson’s book should find a wide audience with people hungry for anything on the subject of Canadian popular music, and they could do a lot worse than to read this encyclopedic work.

Spooner by Pete Dexter

By David Hiltbrand

In a sense, Spooner unfolds in three stages, the first two of which are vibrant. Sort of like life.

Friday, October 9 2009

Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 by Chad Heap

By Chadwick Jenkins

If you want to understand race and sexuality in the United States, don't bother with policy -- look at entertainment!

Thursday, October 8 2009

Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

By Shyam K. Sriram

If writers want to ameliorate the public perception of India held by the vast majority of the planet, they should write realistic fiction and not continue to perpetuate either the notion of the Temple of Doom dystopia or the Jewel in the Crown utopia.

The Knowledge Book: Everything You Need to Know to Get By in the 21st Century

By Sarah Boslaugh

This is a lot of fun for browsing -- but be warned that it’s addictive -- once you pick it up hours may pass without your realizing it.

Wednesday, October 7 2009

Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life by Michael Greenberg

By Christel Loar

Greenberg's New York lives and breathes (and sometimes stinks) like a larger than life hero.

The Man from Kinvara by Tess Gallagher

By Diane Leach

Gallagher's work often suffers unfairly beside famous husband's Raymond Carver.The Man from Kinvara should permanently remedy this.

Tuesday, October 6 2009

American Political Thought, eds. Isaac Kramnick and Theodore J. Lowi

By Shyam K. Sriram

A substantial contribution to the field, but it does not sit well with our goals as educators because of what it lacks: a truly representative manifest of the American experience.

Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001, by Phillip E. Wegner

By Chadwick Jenkins

Wegner depicts this period in recent history as open to all possibilities, possibilities that come crashing down with the World Trade Center attacks and the subsequent War on Terror.

Monday, October 5 2009

Blood River by Tim Butcher

By Roy Gutman

This is travelogue at its best, but so much more: Those who care about the fate of Africa, who want to see the continent prosper, should read this book to grasp the immensity of the problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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