Books :: Reviews

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (3/28/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown and Sean Edgar at 5:00 PM on March 28, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

By Charles McNair at 2:46 PM on March 27, 2012

Friends of Edith Hamilton, prepare the bacchanal. One of the most famous and frightening of the Greek myths lives on—vividly—in our 21st century. Once upon an Attic time, there lived a king named Minos. Ascending his throne to rule the island of Crete, Minos asked the God of the Sea, Poseidon, to bless his reign. Poseidon sent Minos a marvelous white bull and commanded the king to sacrifice it in the god’s honor to bring happiness and bounty to Minos’ kingdom. The animal proved so magnificent, however, that the king betrayed Poseidon and kept the beast for his own herd.... read more

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (3/21/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown, and Sean Edgar at 2:30 PM on March 21, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

One Hundred and One Nights by Benjamin Buchholz

By Hillary Jordan at 12:27 PM on March 20, 2012

When I opened my mail in January of 2011 and found the galley of One Hundred and One Nights and accompanying blurb request from Benjamin Buchholz’s editor at Little, Brown, I was almost comically surprised. I’d gotten maybe a dozen such appeals since publishing my first novel, Mudbound, every last one of them for books about farming and/or race relations in the Jim Crow South. This book was about the war in Iraq, and there wasn’t a dead mule in sight. The author, according to the jacket copy, was an American soldier who’d served in the war. That was... read more

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (3/14/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown, and Sean Edgar at 6:00 PM on March 14, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir

By Chantal James at 4:02 PM on March 13, 2012

“If a fraternity can be created by words, then writing is well worthwhile. What I wanted was to penetrate so deeply into other people’s lives that when they heard my voice they would get the impression they were talking to themselves.” -Simone de Beauvoir in The Prime of Life The Prime of Life—published in 1960 as the second volume of four in Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography— meticulously recounts the decade and a half of the author’s life when she began to emerge as a public figure. As the book begins, de Beauvoir has recently graduated from the Sorbonne and begun... read more

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (3/7/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown, and Sean Edgar at 3:00 PM on March 7, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942 by Christopher Wilkinson

By Evan Minsker at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2012

West Virginia is arguably the most geographically muddled state in the Union. Some Northerners think of the state as “the South.” I remember Chris Matthews referring to it off-handedly as a “Confederate” state several years ago in a “red state” election round-up. Some Southerners think of it as “the North.” Again, that’s sort of fair considering the state seceded from Virginia to join the Union during the Civil War. Either way, West Virginia sits firmly in the Appalachia region. The irony of that term—Appalachia—is that it comprises a few common-knowledge Southern states (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Carolinas),... read more

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (2/29/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown, and Sean Edgar at 4:30 PM on February 29, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

On The Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac

By Bradford Tolleson at 1:13 PM on February 28, 2012

Book Review: On the Road - The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac read more

Comic Book & Graphic Novel Round-Up (2/22/12)

By Garrett Martin, Hillary Brown, and Sean Edgar at 5:00 PM on February 22, 2012

Each week, Paste reviews the most intriguing comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other illustrated books.... read more

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker

By Bob Fancher at 12:30 PM on February 22, 2012

At 14, Melissa Sances was overweight, acned, and socially awkward. Life at home with her brothers and single mother wasn’t easy. She took a handful of Benadryl and Valium to escape. She entered, instead, the world of biological psychiatry. read more

Into the Wild with Dear Sugar, aka Cheryl Strayed

By Sara Faye Lieber at 1:32 PM on February 15, 2012

In 1995, Cheryl Strayed was 26, freshly divorced and turned-on to heroin, a few months past an abortion, and for all intents and purposes an orphan on her own in the world. With no place to be and no one to be any place with, she found a book in a store, traced her finger across a line on a map, and decided to follow that jagged line across the mountains of the Pacific Crest Trail. Wild is the true story of how walking that line took Strayed from where she started to the person she is today—a successful, critically... read more