Book Reviews Archive
Round-Up: Alan Rickman, Philip Pullman’s OLF Resignation, and Literary Oscar Nominees
From the loss of the beloved Harry Potter actor Alan Rickman to a particularly strong year for literary film adaptations in the 2016 Oscar nominations, a look at the latest headlines from the literary world: British actor Alan Rickman, age 69, passed away on January 14. Rickman is well-known
Review: ROOMS FOR RENT IN THE BURNING CITY by Brandon Courtney
Rooms for Rent in the Burning City Brandon Courtney Spark Wheel Press, 2015 74 pp, $12 Buy paperback In the days before Spotify and iTunes, rock bands faced a challenge known as the “sophomore album slump.” A new band typically had had a few years to compose and then
Woolf at the Table: Good Dinner, Good Talk
I have always been enchanted by Virginia Woolf and—being an avid cook and food writer myself—by gastronomic references in literature, both fiction and nonfiction. So when I learned about a book about the eating habits of the Bloomsbury set, of which Woolf was a member, I took notice. The
Armchair Traveling through History: The Orphan Trains in Literature
Between 1854 and 1929, around 200,000 homeless, abandoned, and orphaned American children were sent by train, mostly from New York City, to new homes, mostly in the Midwestern U.S. Later in the twentieth century and early in the twenty-first, in our contemporary versions of the Orphan Trains, planes from
The Best Books of the New Year
Resolved to read more this year? These books are the best the new year has to offer. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist Sunil Yapa Lee Boudreaux Books January 12 $26.00 In his novel about the heated 1999 WTO riots in Seattle, Sunil Yapa writes:
Book Review: MEMORY THEATER by Simon Critchley
Memory Theater Simon Critchley Other Press, Nov 2015 112 pp, $15.95 Buy hardcover | eBook What I remember most from reading Thomas Harris’ Hannibal when it was first published in 1999 was not the graphic violence and strange character detour for which the book would be criticized; it was
Destruction Modes: Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Solar Maximum
Solar Maximum Sueyeun Juliette Lee Futurepoem, Winter 2015 128 pp, $18 “Perhaps we continue in the wake of a disaster we hardly marked,” runs the last sentence of Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s endnotes for Solar Maximum. Or, the last sentence could be the italicized incomplete fragment: “((when the sun disappears”
Review: THIS IS WHY I CAME by Mary Rakow
This is Why I Came Mary Rakow Counterpoint, December 15 2015 204 pp; $24 Buy hardcover | eBook To tell you that Mary Rakow’s lyrical novel This is Why I Came is a recasting of biblical narratives hardly sets the book apart—the Bible, with its knotty metaphors, unequaled cast
Review: YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE Alexandra Kleeman Harper, August 2015 283 pp, $25.99 Buy hardcover | eBook | trade paperback | audio Seeming unmoored from both tangible responsibility and abstract constructs, like Mersualt in Camus’ The Stranger, “A”—the narrator of Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too
Review: THE CITY AT THREE PM: WRITING, READING, AND TRAVELING by Peter LaSalle
The City at Three PM: Writing, Reading, and Traveling Peter LaSalle Dzanc Books, December 15 2015 280 pp; $15.95 Buy paperback We read travel writers for a variety of reasons, but often it is for the vicarious thrill of the journey, somewhat akin to schadenfreude in that we can