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A while ago, there was an uproar of discussion regarding the nature of book reviews and whether the critic should be, in the most simplistic way of speaking, “nice” or not. Quite a bit of the conversation centered on William Giraldi’s self-congratulatory, excessively assholish, show offy, “Let’s see how many references and allusions I can [...]

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I was thrilled to read the great review of Power Chord by the Associated Press. Linked here to the Washington Post publication of the review, the key takeaway is that PC is “entertaining travelogue of sorts that hits all the right notes.” Be sure to the entire review here!

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If you spend any amount of time online, either writing blogs or reading blogs, then prepare to have one of two reactions when you read Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday: 1) You will read nothing you didn’t already know and you will be decidedly nonplussed. 2) You will [...]

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David Duhr at The Dallas Morning News had a great review of Growing Up Dead in Texas by Stephen Graham Jones. The payoff of the review? Without giving away any spoilers, Duhr calls Jones’ latest, “one of the truest, and finest, war stories you’re likely to read.” I’ve been running behind so I’m just starting [...]

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In The World Without You, Joshua Henkin explores the different ways in which family members grieve after a journalist is murdered in a warzone. The novel centers around the Frankels, a financially comfortable Jewish family from Manhattan who spend the weekends and summers in their Berkshires country house. The clan is composed of Gretchen, a [...]

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In My Date with Neanderthal Woman by David Galef, there’s an intriguing amount of absurdity and fantasy that remains rooted in reality. Winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition, the book plants outlandish situations into normal, mundane circumstances to which we can all relate. [Disclosure: Galef sat on my thesis committee in graduate [...]

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When the house lights go down and the crowd jumps to its feet and the spotlight operators squint through the dry ice, seeking musicians on the stage, the bass player is often the last rocker they highlight. Singers and guitarists generally get most of the attention. So perhaps it’s fitting that Duff McKagan released It’s [...]

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In today’s Wall Street Journal, Carl Rollyson examines Larry Brown: A Writer’s Life by Jean W. Cash. The late, great Southern literary icon’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer and a man are described in this book. I’ll have my own comments on Larry Brown: A Writer’s Life shortly. But in the meantime, it’s simply [...]

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It seems like every other day, someone in our bookish blogging world offers a theory for why major media book coverage is shrinking. Generally, these concepts involve the economy, the proliferation of blogs, the short attention spans of today’s consumers, and a few little green martians. But today, I’m going to offer another, admittedly outlandish, [...]

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In bestselling author Anthony Bozza’s new book, Why AC/DC Matters we get the kind of impassioned art criticism that is normally relegated to websites, fanzines, and independent publishers. Now, in the sake of full disclosure, Bozza is a friend and business colleague of mine. So take these comments with a grain of salt if you [...]

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Dinitia Smith wrote an interesting review of A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias. I’m generally not keen on books dealing with the slow decline of someone facing terminal illness, but this review piqued my interest. And the last line of the piece is a pretty cool encapsulation of the book and it’s achievement: “in the [...]

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I spent a good deal of time wrapped up in Tony Bacon’s Million Dollar Les Paul: In Search of the Most Valuable Guitar in the World this past weekend. It’s an engaging read that is an exhaustive look into the roots of a collecting craze involving 1958 to 1960 Gibson Les Paul guitars. Bacon points [...]

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Louis Bayard reviewed Matt Bondurant’s new novel, The Wettest County in the World for Salon.com. The novel, based on Bondurant’s grandfather, deals with crime, corruption, and moonshine in the hills of rural Virginia. “Bondurant’s bootleggers are eminently touchable and, even in their worst moments, touching,” Bayard writes. “This is a lyrical and riveting book about [...]

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I wrote about Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society for CrunchGear. Click here to read the entire piece. Manjoo’s text is intriguing. He points out how, as people, we have always had a tendency to believe what we want to believe. However, recent technological advances make it easier for us [...]

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