Admit it. You’ve done it. We all have at one time or another. As kids in our bedrooms. As drunken adults at a wedding reception. You might have done it in the car on the way to work today.
Play air guitar, that is.
But some people take air guitar beyond just a simple, spontaneous expression […]
It was hard to be objective with this one. I first learned about Joe McGinniss Jr. through the much discussed news item on Publishers Marketplace announcing the sale of his novel to Grove/Atlantic. Then a personal and obviously time-consuming email appeared in my inbox from McGinniss. As opposed to most of the pitches I get that are […]
So A.J. Jacobs likes to do things. Strange, challenging things. And then he writes about them.
Seems simple enough. But in this world of people slipping into easy gimmicks to masquerade as entertainment, the sincerity (and the extent) with which Jacobs immerses himself in the experience is refreshing. First, he read the encyclopedia from start to finish and […]
It’s been a while for me. Fiction hasn’t been moving me much lately. And even my love of short stories had let me down. Nothing was exciting me.
Until I read Richard Lange’s Dead Boys: Stories. This wonderous literary collection has enough tint of noir to be thrilling and the author’s voice is undeniable. Full of hard-scrabble […]
Louis Theroux hangs out with unusual people. He spends time with pimps, Neo-Nazis, porn performers, UFO believers, cultists, and folks that enjoy life outside the mainstream. Fascinated by sub-cultures, Theroux probably throws a helluva cocktail party.
Born in Singapore to American novelist Paul Theroux and his British wife Anne Castle, Theroux holds dual American-British citizenship. This […]
When we typically think of controversial books, we envision lurid exposes of deceased royalty. We picture tell-all memoirs from well-connected upper class madams naming the names of their famous clientele. We see stacks of books about global warming, economic theory, the war on terror, or examinations of political administrations.
However, the controversy doesn’t need to […]
Mark McNay was raised in a mining village in central Scotland. After fifeen years doing odd jobs, McNay entered the University of East Anglia Creative Writing Course in Norwich, England. He graduated from that program with distinction and, in 2007, he received the Arts Foundation Fellowship for New Fiction.
McNay’s debut novel Fresh was published by Canongate […]
At the back of a two-story warehouse, “there was a door wide enough for large cargo that led into a dim chamber,” Tom Zoellner writes. “Dead electric bulbs hung from wires in the ceiling. The two soldiers behind me unslung their rifles. They were held casually, but the muzzles were pointed at the approximate region […]
Author Steven Blush was firmly entrenched in the hardcore punk music scene. Irrevocably changed by the music of Black Flag, he built a career as a journalist and music expert. He wrote American Hardcore: A Tribal History and served as writer/producer for a documentary film inspired by that book. But then, the bluesy riffs of Tom Keifer and […]
Old friends have a quality to their voice that immediately warms your soul upon hearing it. You can go years without speaking to that person and then one day the phone rings, you say hello, and with one word that voice negates the passage of time and unleases a flood of memories.
A rare few writers have this […]