All Yesterday's Parties
New book on purveyors of underground music doubles as lesson in early rock writing... read more
Signs of Life 2004
By the time you read this, you’ll have seen manifold annual Best-of book lists in other magazines and newspapers... read more
Getting Lost in Translation
In her fine writer’s manual, The Passionate, Accurate Story, Carol Bly asks whether a link might exist between the lack of reading and a culture's viciousness... read more
Ordinary Wolves
“It felt strong and good to be near mountains without names,” concludes Cutuk Hawcly, briefly returning to the trackless rural Alaska of his boyhood... read more
Scarlett Thomas
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Scarlett Thomas has paid L. Frank Baum a big compliment... read more
Gilead
For Ruth, the adolescent narrator in Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping (1980)... read more
Standing by Words - African Novels
It’s nothing new to argue that Americans don’t pay enough attention to foreign fiction; one wonders if the situation were ever different... read more
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
On one level, Blood Done Sign My Name is a terrific memoir—Tim Tyson’s retrospective of a racially motivated 1970 murder in his hometown... read more
American Music Is and Other Jazz Selections
The by-now venerable music critic Nat Hentoff has always written perceptively and sympathetically about jazz. He does so again with American Music Is... read more
Elliott Smith and The Big Nothing
New biography examines the life and tragic death of celebrated Portland musician... read more
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Imagine that Shakespeare’s fairies and potions are as real and accurately represented as his monarchs and wars—no more, no less... read more
Performing the Faith
Time magazine has called Stanley Hauerwas “America’s Best Theologian.” This is like the Chaucer Review giving Gabriel García Márquez... read more
Envy
Yuri Olesha’s Envy, a classic of early Soviet fiction, is everything Shadow of the Wind is not—brutish, nasty, short and hilarious. The novel’s malcontent narrator... read more
The Adolescent and The Idiot
Envy harks back to another classic of Russian literature—Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the first in a series of great novels that... read more
Blankets
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott claims that if you survived childhood, you have more than enough material to write a book. I’m inclined to agree, but memoirs are tricky... read more
The Book of Proper Names
Amelie Nothomb is a cult figure in Europe but little known stateside. Judging by The Book of Proper Names, her narrative style is oddly sparse... read more
Tom Perrotta's Suburban Distopia
Short, with graying hair and an athletic build, Tom Perrotta enters a Starbucks in Belmont, the Boston suburb... read more
Standing By Words
It seems odd that a heavyweight writer like Joyce Carol Oates would republish her early novel A Garden of Earthly Delights... read more
The Shadow of the Wind
An apt title for the fat bestseller it names, The Shadow of the Wind is gorgeously suggestive; never mind that it connotes... read more
Hell Bent For Leather
When it comes to heavy metal, there are two kinds of people. There are those of us who were lured upon hearing our first power chord... read more
The 20 Best Gadgets of the Decade…
The 20 Best Live Acts of the…
The 50 Best Albums of the Decade…
The 25 Best Movie Performances of the…
Download Harper Blynn's "Centrifugal Motion"
Blind Pilot - One Red Thread
B.O.B. - Put Me On
Punch Brothers - Punch Brothers at CMJ
David Bazan - Hard To Be
