Posts Tagged ‘Books’
Space Cowboy – A Review of Ben Mezrich, Sex on the Moon
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: January 16, 2012
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 7 Comments
Ben Mezrich has chronicled the high-stakes shenanigans of shady students at elite educational institutions for nearly a decade. His best-sellers include: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions; Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions; and [...]
Bolaño’s Blog of B-Sides: A Review of Between Parentheses
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: January 9, 2012
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 6 Comments
Roberto Bolaño is best known for his epic novels The Savage Detectives and 2666, which were translated from Spanish into English to wide acclaim after his death in 2003. In the final years of his life, in poor health and laboring to finish 2666, the indefatigable Bolaño wrote a series of columns for newspapers in [...]
War Games – A Review of Roberto Bolaño, The Third Reich
Posted by: Keith Meatto on: January 3, 2012
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 8 Comments
To read Roberto Bolaño is to enter a world of poetry and violence, where fantasy meets the mundane and writing is a matter of life and death. Since he died in 2003, sixteen of his books, notably the epic novels The Savage Detectives and 2666, have been translated into English. The latest, The Third [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
#indierocknovels: A Catalogue
Posted by: L.V. Lopez on: November 1, 2011
- In: Music
- 2 Comments
Last Monday, in an early Christmas present to the editors of this website, #indierocknovels began trending on Twitter. For a few hours people all over the world engaged in clever attempts to synthesize their favorite bands and favorite books, arriving at some portmantastic combinations in the process. Our staff of wordplay addicts submitted more than [...]
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 [...]
