Justin Taylor: Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever
Feisty, zeitgeisty Justin Taylor’s first short-story collection artfully captures the view of the 2000s from the perspective of a twentysomething. I’ll be surprised if we don’t find two standout pieces from this collection in prize-winning anthologies of 2010 short stories.... read more
Patti Smith: Just Kids
Bohemian Rhapsody Patti Smith made a promise to the celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that she would one day write their story. Now, twenty years after Mapplethorpe’s death to AIDS-related complications, Smith has kept her word, immortalizing their journey of innocent love and artistic pursuits amidst New York City’s bohemia in her memoir, Just Kids.... read more
Catfish Karkowsky: Literture
Uneven road to success Literture is Karkowsky’s first book, a strange collection of stories that initially feels birthed from a world where Henry Miller and David Sedaris are read to a soundtrack of Tom Waits’s entire catalogue. This wouldn’t be a problem if the first 20 or so stories—some no more than four pages long—exhibited any of the depth of these artists. Instead, the reader must slog through mind-numbingly flat narration and gimmicky comedic premises presented in a tossed-off manner.... read more
Aleksander Hemon (Ed.): Best European Fiction 2010
Anthology of contemporary Euro-fiction long overdue Aleksandar Hemon begins his introduction to Best European Fiction 2010 by citing the sad statistic that translations account for less than five percent of the literature published in the United States. This is the first anthology of its kind, and after reading it you may be so furious that such quality work has been kept from you that you’ll repeat that stat to anyone who’ll listen.... read more
Raj Patel: The Value of Nothing
A common cause Questioning property rights, Oxford-educated World Bank veteran Patel explores the accelerating contemporary trend toward “enclosures,” which he sees as stolen benefits that actually belong to the public. “A genuine democracy,” he writes, involves “moving beyond ownership to stewardship to commoning.”... read more
Salman Ahmad: Rock & Roll Jihad
Rocking the casbah In Rock & Roll Jihad, Salman Ahmad—once an unassuming teenager playing guitar in a suburban New York garage band—chronicles his transformation from Pakistani medical student to world-renowned musician.... read more
David Bianculli: Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"
TV critic fills in details of historic primetime battle The Smothers Brothers occupy a strange space in the history of pop culture. Battles with network censors over their groundbreaking variety series, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, are the stuff of legend. By the time the Smothers got fired in 1969 (they bristle at the notion that the show was cancelled), Comedy Hour had become a benchmark for political expression and satire in prime time.... read more
James McManus: Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
Go all-in on this one James McManus parlayed an assignment for Harper’s at the 2000 World Series of Poker into a fifth place finish in the Main Event. His new history of the game traces poker from its roots in China, the Middle East and Europe to today’s cultural phenomenon of nonstop televised Texas Hold `Em.... read more
Ted Gioia: The Birth (and Death) of the Cool
Mourning an old friend Cool is dead. For those of us who missed the funeral, Ted Gioia offers a probing eulogy, reminding us of the cool we once knew—that intangible tangle of image and irony, artifice and fashion.... read more
Various Artists: Light: On the South Side
The gorgeous sights and sounds of ’70s Chicago blues Afro-topped women’s libbers, fedora-clad gangsters and bespectacled academics: The black men and women who inhabit photographer Michael Abramson’s hedonistic photos of ’70s Chicago blues clubs span the social and historical spectrum. In new book Light: On the South Side, we witness a time when the meeting point of Howlin’ Wolf and James Brown still catalyzed black American life—the last time, as Nick Hornby says in the introduction, that “the past and the future [co-existed] so peaceably.”... read more
J.G. Ballard: The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
Domestic shock therapy Before The Twilight Zone, there was J.G. Ballard. The speculative fiction writer—who died earlier this year—wrote the novels that became Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun and David Cronenberg’s 1996 horror flick Crash, about the relationship between sex and car crashes. And The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard is another wild ride.... read more
Jason Bitner (Ed.): Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves
Reminiscing the mix tape Blame it on Twitter, reality television, or the daily sprouting of self-chronicling blogs, but it’s undeniable that we’re living in a voyeuristic culture. Catching glimpses into other’s slice-of-life moments is what we crave; a need that Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves strives to fill.... read more
Jonathan Safran Foer: Eating Animals
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels are dense, energetic, concerned with all things moral and Jewish, pleased with themselves, sentimental, and too wordy for a lot of us. They are like wild Russian dances that leave you breathless and wondering why you stayed on the dance floor. Without argument, he is enormously talented and passionate, but his writing and gimmicks can get in the way of the material.... read more
Kanye West: Through the Wire
A humbling reminder of his rights and wrongs With illustrations and commentary explaining 12 of his most well-known songs, Kanye West’s Through the Wire takes on both the title and overall sentiment of his breakout single: “I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph.” But the book is about more than his near-fatal car accident. Instead, West devotes nearly equal time to explaining his pop culture references and admitting his wrongs, with “Touch the Sky” revealed as an apology letter to the girl he left behind to make music.... read more
Robert Mattheu: The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story
Could use more raw power If the snarling Iggy Pop of 1969 knew his Stooges would be coffee table book fodder, he would’ve scoffed. But here we are, 40 years later, with The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story. The title tells all: unreleased photos, band testimonials and album reviews. But while rock’n’roll platitudes flourish in books about, say, The Beatles, here the fawning feels awkward. CREEM photographer Robert Mattheu’s stilted writing never dives deeper than anecdotes and base descriptions. We learn Ron Ashton’s apartment, when he hosted Elektra Record executives in 1971, was “too horrible to describe.” The execs... read more
Victor LaValle: Big Machine
Former heroin addict Ricky Rice has resigned himself to a... read more
Nick Hornby: Juliet, Naked
Duncan is the kind of guy who won’t man-up... read more
Elijah Wald: How The Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll
In 2004, music writer Elijah Wald released... read more
Michael Taeckens (Ed.): Love is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships and Broken Hearts
Comedy and tragedy intertwine in these tales of mankind’s most... read more
David Byrne: Bicycle Diaries
David Byrne admits early on in his Bicycle Diaries that... read more
