Archive for the ‘Book Reviews’ Category
The 10 Best Poetry Books of 2011
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: December 21, 2011
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 2 Comments
[Our resident poet Jeffery Berg shares his favorite poetry collections of 2011] 10. Lauren Berry, The Lifting Dress A very strong debut. Berry’s Southern Gothic poems are unsettling, beautiful, and mysterious. 9. Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split I’m in awe by the electricity and inventiveness of this collection which pays tribute to the American forgotten and [...]
The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2011
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: December 20, 2011
- In: Best Fiction 2011 | Book Reviews | Books
- 9 Comments
In the latest Ali Smith novel, a precocious 10-year-old girl asks: “If a story isn’t a fact, but it is a made up version of what happened…what is the point of it?” Her conversational companion, an eccentric middle-aged man, replies: “Think how quiet a book is on a shelf, just sitting there unopened. Then think [...]
The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2011
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: December 19, 2011
2011 was the first year in which I read more new nonfiction than new fiction: the 10 books below are the best of the bunch. As with albums and songs, declaring the year’s best books is a subjective enterprise, with the added complication that it takes longer to read a book than to listen to [...]
Words & Pictures (for sub-literates): A Review of Alan Moore’s Promethea
Posted by: L.V. Lopez on: November 29, 2011
Alan Moore is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the history of comic books. For people like me, graphic evangelists, it is Moore we most often turn to when attempting to sway the unconvinced of the medium’s potential. He is a serious writer whose skill, innovation and effect on popular culture are on [...]
Brown and Blue: A Review of Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: November 14, 2011
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 1 Comment
Compared to his first two novels, the premise of the new Jeffrey Eugenides book seems tame. The Virgin Suicides (1993) features five teenage sisters who kill themselves. Middlesex (2002) is a multigenerational saga starring an understandably muddled hermaphrodite. His latest, The Marriage Plot, is about three kids who graduate from Brown in 1982 and try [...]
Murakami Magic: A Review of 1Q84
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: November 3, 2011
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 3 Comments
He’s a child prodigy and judo champ turned math tutor, aspiring novelist, and improbable chick magnet. She’s a martial arts teacher and masseuse who moonlights as an assassin. On the cusp of 30, both are lonely as hell, but terrified of commitment. So in 1984 – twenty years after they bonded in grade school—they find [...]
Words & Pictures (for sub-literates): A Review of Pyongyang
Posted by: L.V. Lopez on: October 17, 2011
“Our Father is Marshall Kim Il-Sung. Our abode is the bosom of the Party. We are brothers and sisters.” The above is a poem read to Guy Delise by a student in The Children’s Palace and, if his 2003 graphic novel, Pyongyang, were a dystopian fantasy set in a chilling future where the human race [...]
Words & Pictures (for sub-literates): The Invisibles Volume 1
Posted by: L.V. Lopez on: September 7, 2011
”The argument goes like this: Words are good. You can win the Nobel Prize for words. Pictures! Pictures are good. They hang in a museum. BUT, if you combine words and pictures you’re automatically doing something intended for children or sub-literates.” -Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Coraline (Jared Thomas is back with the [...]
Words & Pictures (for sub-literates): A Review of Asterios Polyp
Posted by: L.V. Lopez on: August 8, 2011
”The argument goes like this: Words are good. You can win the Nobel Prize for words. Pictures! Pictures are good. They hang in a museum. BUT, if you combine words and pictures you’re automatically doing something intended for children or sub-literates.” -Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Coraline (Today we welcome Jared Thomas to [...]
Presumed Guilty – A Review of The Central Park Five
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: July 18, 2011
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 3 Comments
To me, Central Park is paradise: a oasis of green and quiet in a city of concrete and noise, a place for picnics and bike rides, reservoir runs and charity walks, Shakespeare plays and symphony concerts, rock and jazz shows, drinks on the pond, and, in years past, a grassy classroom for my students on [...]
