The Worst Library Books Ever
A couple of Michigan librarians have started a web site designed to publicize terrible library books for a) our amusement and b) to bring to light the need for libraries…
Features & Reviews
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
And I’m back! Thanks very much to Michael Berger for filling in for me while I was gone! He did a damn fine job. Lots has happened over the last…
The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
Welcome to July 5th! Thanks to America, you are now missing limbs, hard of hearing, and hungover. Don’t worry. It’s still a fine day to read book reviews.
Loitering in the Wrong Places
The book, with its halting, unbeautiful, disjointed lines, proves her awareness of the difficulty of writing poetry about war, trade, immigration, Hurricane Katrina, and George Bush. These are intensely politicized…
Journal Highlight: Guernica, The Believer and Cabinet
Guernica talks to Fatima Bhutto, 27-year-old poet and Pakistan’s heir apparent, about the death of her father in one of Pakistan’s famous “encounters,” the two sides of Benazir and why…
A Mashup of Devils
These days one doesn’t have to look strictly to horror movies to find devils.
Vertigo in the Stacks
“When I first went to work in Harvard’s Widener Library, I immediately made my first mistake: I tried to read the books. I quickly came to know the compulsive vertigo…
We Need Studs Terkel
At the bookstore I work at, we recently got in a HUGE shipment of remaindered books. Books by Michael Ondaatje, Virginia Woolf, Alain de Botton, all of them brand-new and…
William T. Vollmann Made Me A San Franciscan
One of the more anticipated summer novels of the season is also probably one of the longest, most disturbing and most intimidating: Imperial, William T. Vollman’s mammoth exploration of the…
Somalian Refugee Writers Show the Way
Dadaab is not an oasis. There is no water. In July, food rations are expected to be cut back to 1000 calories a day. The camps are short 38,000 latrines. Every year only twenty students from the entire camp escape to university, the only legitimate way out.
What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
Five short stories modeled on the works of the old masters make up this smart, witty first collection
The Dead Sea Scrolls of John Dillinger
The tale of a long-lost account of one of America’s most notorious criminals, a struggling ad man, and the contributing editor at Playboy who brought the story to light.