Reading
Reading
A Little Reading Music
March 29th, 2012
Edgy Australian-American novelist and Black Mountain Institute Fellow Kris Saknussemm broke tradition on March 13 at the UNLV Greenspun Hall Auditorium by introducing music (and a few short music videos) to the literary reading format. Read more »
Reading
Read ’Em and Don’t Weep
Think you’re too cool for YA fiction? I did, too, until I accidentally read The Hunger Games
March 22nd, 2012
By now you’ve been bombarded with the pop-culture phenomenon that is The Hunger Games. Following the likes of Harry Potter and Twilight, the young-adult trilogy is traveling a well-trodden path toward ubiquity. Three books turn into four movies (pending box office success, of course); the first, called simply The Hunger Games, comes out on March 23. Read more »
Book Jacket
Short stories rise above Jewish stereotypes in new Englander collection
March 15th, 2012
Reading Nathan Englander reminds me of those ’60s-era ads for Levy’s rye bread: you know, the ones with all kinds of smiling ethnic types enjoying a bite of Levy’s and the tagline, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye.” Englander is—first and foremost—a gifted short story writer, and while his stories are uniquely Jewish in nature, their appeal is universal. Read more »
Librarian Loves
A Cold Treachery
March 15th, 2012
A Cold Treachery is the seventh mystery in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series by the mother-son writing team of Charles Todd. Read more »
Reading
Killer Story
A conversation with Tim Dorsey, the best-selling author of a comic vigilante series on the eve of his Las Vegas visit
March 1st, 2012
Now a New York Times best-selling author, Dorsey’s written 13 comedic thrillers set in Florida. In his most recent, Pineapple Grenade (William Morrow, $26), the psychotic Serge and his perpetually stoned sidekick, Coleman, become spies. It’s light entertainment to be sure. Still, Dorsey’s readers take it pretty seriously. Just check his website, where there are photos of his fans flaunting Serge-inspired tattoos. For example, big black letters spell “Serge’s Disciples” across a reader’s back. Read more »
Librarian Loves
Rules of Civility
February 23rd, 2012
From the rat-a-tat-tat Hepburn/Tracy dialogue to the languid woman on a chaise lounge on the cover, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (Viking Adult, $27) is a delicious depiction of 1938 Manhattan. Read more »
Book Jacket
This physician’s sequel isn’t such a ‘wild thing’ after all
February 23rd, 2012
I’m not crazy about Josh Bazell’s Wild Thing, but that has nothing to do with the fact that Bazell has a bachelor’s degree in writing from Brown University and a medical degree from Columbia University and I can’t stand show-offs. (Honestly, is there anything more annoying than a physician who writes best-selling novels in his spare time?) In truth, my dislike of Wild Thing (Reagan Arthur Books, $26) has everything to do with how much I genuinely liked Bazell’s first book, Beat the Reaper (2009). Read more »
Reading
Map Quest
Sex gives way to self-reflexivity in Michel Houellebecq’s new novel
January 26th, 2012
Novelist Michel Houellebecq’s new, Prix Goncourt-winning book, The Map and the Territory (Knopf, $27), is a rather mild offering by Houellebecqian standards. There is less sex and heresy than in any of the novels since Whatever. Instead, there are liberties of a different order Read more »
Book Jacket
A Las Vegan’s memoir of television success is for fans only.
January 5th, 2012
I really don't know what to make of Mr. CSI, the new memoir from the TV show's creator Anthony E. Zuiker. The book, which was written with Todd Gold, doesn't really know what it wants to be. Is it a straightforward memoir? A behind the scenes look at a modern television phenomenon? A scrappy self-help book? A primer on surviving your dysfunctional family? Mr. CSI: How a Vegas Dreamer Mad a Killing in Hollywood One Body at a Time (Harper, $27) contains elements of all those things, but despite its best intentions, it never transcends its mongrel pedigree. On the plus side, Zuiker was raised in Las Vegas, so there's plenty of local appeal. Read more »
Librarian Loves
Salvage the Bones
January 5th, 2012
The 2011 National Book Award winner for fiction, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA, $24), recounts 12 days in the lives of a poor, motherless, rural Mississippi family as Hurricane Katrina builds up and then hits their dilapidated home. Read more »
