Features & Reviews
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
Ah, the lovely march of Spring… Who can deny the splendor and joy that May hath wrought?
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Verbophobia: About the Phobias in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom,” by Charles Baudelaire, 2666’s epigram
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MANGIA MANGA
Since its 1983 debut as a weekly serial, Oishinbo has sold over 100 million paperback editions in Japan. Yet while Oishinbo is undeniably the granddaddy of food-themed manga I’ve discovered many fine examples of the genre. Below are synopses of…
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
Sometimes, reading book blogs can make you feel like you’re watching the paparazzi photograph J-Lo on entertainment television, only J-Lo has gotten ugly, become a man, died, and named herself J.R.R. Tolkien. The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup’s goal is to…
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Was This Review Helpful? Amazon and the Search for an Unassailable Masterpiece
One customer review of “The Catcher in the Rye” warns readers that it will make you “want to kill yourself.” Another calls Holden Caulfield a “whiney, immature, angst ridden teenager who need[s] a smack in the head.”
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All’s Love in Myth and War
Clouds with legs, balloons filled with flame, and a war against February occupy the world of Shane Jones’s debut novel.
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Josh Bearman: The Last Book I Loved, The Incredible Yanqui
The Incredible Yanqui by Hermann Bacher Deutsch is the true story of the exploits of Lee Christmas, a tramp railroader, scoundrel, and soldier of fortune who wound up helping the United Fruit Company colonize central america as a corporate fiefdom.…
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What Will Become of the Word “Ponzi”?
When Bernard Madoff described his investment business as a ‘giant Ponzi scheme’, he gave a somewhat obscure phrase, used to describe a swindle that pays early investors using money from later investors, a huge boost.
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The Fine Art of Quitting
To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle. — Confucius
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War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery
With echoes of 9/11, the protagonist of Jim Knipfel’s novel flees the ubiquitous surveillance of a not-so-futuristic government.
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
It’s Wednesday, which means that it’s time for another roundup of things we think you might want to read from book blogs around the Internet. Since last time, the Internet has been abuzz with the idiosyncrasies and failings of canonical…