Author and Podcaster Rax King Is Irresistibly Cheeky in ‘Tacky’
Author and podcaster Rax King shares her love of tasteless kitsch in her funny book on pop culture, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer.
book review
On Manager Alan Walden’s Rough and Tumble Music Memoir, ‘Southern Man’
Alan Walden’s Southern Man tells the lively tale of promoting music from the turbulent American South with Otis Redding and his brother Phil of Capricon Studios.
Yanis Varoufakis Anticipates Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse in ‘Another Now’
Disguised as sci-fi, Yanis Varoufaikis’ Another Now contemplates how life post-capitalism might be more free and equal – and how that might be destroyed.
Belarusian Fiction ‘Red Crosses’ Creates Story with Confusion
With its deliberately disjointed narrative shifts, is Sasha Filipenko’s Belarusian fiction Red Crosses a story of memory or memory of a story?
Ariel Dorfman’s Novella ‘The Compensation Bureau’ Is a Fantastical Plea for Hope
A thin book of big ideas, Ariel Dorfman’s ‘The Compensation Bureau’ leaves much to the imagination, like a brilliant sketch of a fantastical parable.
Peter Weiss and Further Reflections of a Political Kind
Vol. II of Peter Weiss’ novel and documentary history, The Aesthetics of Resistance, laments struggles lost as Nazism and WWII take hold.
Memoir and Criticism in Matthew Specktor’s ‘Always Crashing the Same Car’
As a critic of both films and literature, Matthew Specktor has a balanced touch that keeps the scales even in his memoir, Always Crashing in the Same Car.
Gianrico Carofiglio’s Three O’Clock in the Morning Gently Awakens the Mind
Gianrico Carofiglio’s drive for simplicity and directness in Three O’Clock in the Morning carries the reader along to clarity about fundamental truths.
‘Klara and the Sun’ Explores What Makes Us Tick
‘Klara and the Sun’ is dappled with themes of personal identity and death, in one form or another.
Canonizing Donna Summer’s Disco Classic ‘I Feel Love’
This deep look into Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” explores how synthpop and new wave opened up new possibilities for genre and synth experimentation and more.
Peter Weiss and Political Reflections of a Novel Kind
Peter Weiss’ ‘The Aesthetics of Resistance, Vol I’ is a post-mortem on the failure to prevent Nazism and an exploration of how art can be a form of resistance.
Short Story Collection ‘Transitions’ Sets the Mind in Motion
Transitions is an exceptional collection of short stories that deserves recognition both for the quality of the writing and its provocative themes.