Pages tagged “book release”

Like most of us, Patton Oswalt had his head in the election last week. He was a live blogger for Comedy Central Indecision, and he also turned his attention to the future of the ill-fated Republican nominee. “McCain, someday, is going to make a great novel,” he wrote on his website. “He doesn't want to be a part of it, but it’ll be one of the most readable things to come out of this dark spiral we’ve been going through for eight years."

Eugene Mirman, poster boy for absurdist comedy, is nothing if not prolific. After working with Stella, 236.com, and Modest Mouse (to name a few,) Messr. Mirman plans to expand his ouevre with a book and follow-up album.

If you haven't read at least a few, you've almost certainly seen them: Continuum's 33 1/3 series of book-length features on albums and their back stories. Yes, that was John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats writing fiction about Black Sabbath's Master of Reality. Yes, that was Paste Senior Contributing Editor Amanda Petrusich who researched the tale behind Nick Drake's Pink Moon and its late popularity. Yes, that was lead Decemberist Colin Meloy who analyzed The Replacements' Let it Be. And yes, that was Paste Contributer Douglas Wolk who put James Brown's Live at the Apollo under the microscope. The list goes on and on. Sixty-one books have been published in the series so far, with about 20 more announced and on the way.

It's really happening. The much-hyped new album from Eminem, lost from the music industry for four years, has a title. And it's not Empack or King Mathers. 

Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, recently became a 2008 MacArthur "Genius" fellow. The fellowship came about a year after The Rest is Noise, his 20th-century study of music history, won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, and took finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Picador has just released The Rest is Noise in paperback, and to mark the occasion, Ross added a number of complementary, interactive features to his website.

How many vampires are too many vampires?

In August, Workman Publishing released 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die, a guided tour of the best songs, selected and reviewed by NPR music critic Tom Moon. This collection prides itself on being free of genre prejudice; it's a compilation that seeks to "break down genre bias and broaden listeners' horizons—it makes every listener a seeker, actively pursuing new artists and new sounds, and reconfirming the greatness of the classics."

Nick Cave sure is busy these days. After the critically acclaimed release of Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (accompanied later by a little book) and a tour filled year, Cave has announced plans to release a new book entitled The Death of Bunny Munro. This will be, of course, his second work of fiction after releasing And the Ass Saw the Angel in 1989.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, Christopher Walken A to Z: The Man, The Movies, The Legend hits shelves. And it's a whopper.

Thomas Pynchon is a famous recluse, his identity, career status and location always having been a subject of speculation. He hasn't published often, and now, less than two years after his unwieldy sixth novel, Against the Day (more than a thousand pages of what The Economist called "rambling, pompous and often completely incomprehensible" prose), news of a compact genre-novel hits.

It's been a very good season for 30 Rock creator Tina Fey. A few weeks back, she picked up three Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress. Since then, the infamous Sarah Palin likeness has kept her on screen and in the news.

"I wish I weren't here. I wish I weren't doing this," Alec Baldwin began his 20-minute speech at the inaugural book signing for his memoir A Promise to Ourselves. The Manhattan event was attended by more than 100 people, 20 of them outside the bookstore, marching with picket signs.

Danny Goldberg's aptly-titled memoir Bumping Into Geniuses, was released by Penguin-imprint Gotham Books on Sept. 18.

Douglas Adams' death was a sad event years ago, but even with the release of chapters in The Salmon of Doubt, his works felt pretty much completed. While he was ostensibly working on a sequel to (in some ways) both Dirk Gently and the Hitchhiker's Guide, neither series really needed it. In fact, the end of Mostly Harmless did its best to wipe that possibility out by not just killing every main character, but instead utterly annihilating them in every possible universe that ever could have existed. The man was pretty thorough.

In what seems to be a project that has gestated in the mind of Bob Mould for quite some time, the guitarist of the groundbreaking Minneapolis punk band Hüsker Dü announced on his website he has secured a deal to write and publish his memoirs.

As hip-hop goes, calling Illmatic seminal is more than a simple understatement. Released in 1994, Nas' grim portrayal of his hardscrabble Queensbridge upbringing defined modern rap, and laid the groundwork for East-coast sound. Nasir Jones had changed the game at only 19 years old.

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has stopped work on her latest installment in the popular series after an Internet leak resulted in widespread distribution of the work-in-progress.

Although it seemingly runs counter to his habit of deleting or amending much of his non-musical writing (see someone's chronicle of his volatile blog activity), Ryan Adams has announced his submission of a manuscript to Akashic, who accepted and will turn the project into an actual, permanent hard-copy book, titled Infinity Blues. As evidenced by the official working-cover above, this is Adams' mustard-colored ticket to the literary realm.

On Friday, 23-year-old Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps announced that he plans to write yet another autobiography, to come out four months after the paperback release of his first book. Built to Succeed will be published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, just in time for the holiday season.

Japanese author Haruki Murakami crafts his books in playful, winding prose less conducive to cinematic adaptation than, say, your average dialogue-driven whodunnit.

With years of simplistic and sincere songcraft, raw vocals and '90s malaise under her belt, Juliana Hatfield still has a lot to say. This time around, Hatfield has chosen two mediums to expose herself: a carefully-tailored pop album and a memoir that looks back on her lengthy run in alternative rock. She spilled some details about both creative efforts when she recently caught up with Paste.

Oh no he didn't.

It was recently announced that Dustin Diamond, perhaps better known as his alter-ego Samuel "Screech" Powers, will pen a Saved By the Bell tell-all, entitled Behind the Bell, and ghostwritten by Alan Goldsher.

It just wouldn't be an election year without a baseball-capped, bone-picking Michael Moore weighing in on the process.

In that spirit, Moore would like to tell you, dear voter, exactly what you're doing at the ballot box and how. Mike's Election Guide, the first literary outing from Moore in five years, will come out Aug. 19 via Grand Central Publishing, and promises a walk through the decisions to be made before casting your vote.

Thurston Moore's work is never done. Co-founding and frontmanning Sonic Youth wasn't enough. Neither was composing for film, curating shows, directing music videos, running a record label, releasing solo work or editing and writing criticism and poetry.

Author, humorist and North Carolinian ex-pat David Sedaris unleashed upon the world another collection of self-deprecating witticisms yesterday with When You Are Engulfed In Flames. The book of essays includes several pieces that will be familiar to fans of The New Yorker and NPR's This American Life, for which Sedaris is a regular contributor.