Features & Reviews
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Childhood as a Branch of Cartography
“We have this idea of armchair traveling, of the reader who seeks in the pages of a ripping yarn or a memoir of polar exploration the kind of heroism and danger, in unknown, half-legendary lands, that he or she could…
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Who Needs Philosophy?
Back when I was a little boy, living in a yellow stucco house in San Diego, I would sit in the hot tub at night, under desert-clear stars, listen to the coyotes howl and ask my Dad about those dead…
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A Little Bit About AK Press
For the past couple years I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the Oakland-based AK Press, a small, “anarchist collective” press that publishes about twenty to thirty books a year, most of which deal with radical politics, current affairs, anarchist/leftist…
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Through a Glass Darkly
“I don’t know where we got the idea that helping sick people means keeping them away from the jaws of death at all costs…”
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Why Do Scandinavians Seek The Darkness?
One of the biggest selling, most highly-praised novels at my bookstore right now is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Since it just came out in paperback, we’ve been selling like six of them a week. Based…
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Billy Twitters and His Big Blue Whale Problem
Mac Barnett, former director of 826LA, has released a children’s book: Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem. JR at Three Guys One Book has this to say:
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Josh Nathan: The Last Book I Loved, Slapstick
I began reading Kurt Vonnegut after I had slid too far down to climb back up the slide of becoming a full-blown pessimist. I remember feeling this during a month long trip to Mexico. I saw villages with homes made…
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Robot Horses Waging War on Angels: A Profile of Chris Eaton
There are bodies, and there are words. The bodies shift sides and see their components replaced; they look in mirrors and see themselves made horrific, the mechanical overtaking the organic, and they ask themselves whether they can still feel, still…
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Freedom Fighters
A new novel by Kate Walbert chronicles five generations of women’s struggles, from suffrage to the War on Terror.
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The Last Book I Loved: C. Max Magee, Paper Trails
A collection of newspaper columns might sound like pretty dull fare, especially 30-year-old columns. But Pete Dexter’s punchy, combustible, wry, and sometimes goofy pieces are irresistible. Paper Trails, released in hardcover in 2007 (but never released in paperback and now…
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The Rumpus Original Combo with Danzy Senna
We are all students of memory. Each of us has our own truth to tell.
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Joseph Cervelin: The Last Book I Loved, The Informers
Brett Easton Ellis offers social observations, morbid humor, and compounding degrees of separation and decadence. If his story cycle The Informers were a Choose Your Own Adventure book, here are some outcomes: – You take your disenfranchised son to Hawaii,…