Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Esther Hautzig
No Wave
Strand Books
828 Broadway locationJuly 30 7:00PM - 8:30PMMusicians, writers, and archivists Thurston Moore and Byron Coley visually chronicle the collision of art and punk in the New York underground punk rock, new wave, experimental music of 1976 to 1980. Discussion and signing.No Wave is the first book to visually chronicle the collision of art and punk in the New York underground punk rock, new wave, experimental music of 1976 to 1980. Musicians, writers, and archivists Thurston Moore and Byron Coley have selected 150 unforgettable images, most of which have never been published and compiled hundreds of hours of personal interviews into an oral history for this exploration and celebration of No Wave. "Moore and Coley wade into the mire that was No Wave and pull all kinds of order into it, if that could be possible. I've never been part of a scene, though if I were I might have opted for this one" (David Bowie). Moore and Coley will talk about this era and share some of this collection with us.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Banana Fish
Francesca Lia Block
Martin Espada
Monday, July 21, 2008
Eudora Welty
The story and its analyses are not mirror-opposites of each other. They are not reflections, either one. Criticism indeed is an art, as a story is, but only the story is to some degree a vision; there is no explanation outside fiction for what the writer is learning to do.—Eudora Welty, "On Writing"
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Marsupial
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Persepolis 2, The Story Of A Return
Persepolis, The Story Of A Childhood
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Short Fiction in your box, Daily!
Every Day Fiction is a magazine that specializes in bringing you fine fiction in bite-sized doses. Every day, without exception, we publish a new short story of 1000 words or fewer that can be read during your lunch hour, on transit, or even over breakfast.Every Day Fiction is a magazine that specializes in bringing you fine fiction in bite-size doses. Every day at 7:30am EST (4:30am PST), we publish a new short story of 1000 words or fewer that can be read during your lunch hour, on transit, or even over breakfast. publish a new short story of 1000 words or fewer that can be read during your lunch hour, on transit, or even over breakfast.
Odyssey through the Odyssey?
As this literary travelogue opens, NPR contributor and author Huler (Defining the Wind) sounds like he's going to renege on his 2001 pledge never to read James Joyce's Ulysses. He joins a Ulysses reading group, but finds himself more fascinated by the story behind it: Homer's The Odyssey, which he'd also never read. A plan is born: to retrace Odysseus' twenty-year travels. Huler's first challenge is that nobody really knows where any of the locations actually are-finding them, he says, is like hunting for the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. Although Huler initially tries too hard to relate his slapdash wanderings to the text (a ride on a Homer-themed cruise has him saying, "I found myself among these magical seafarers, exactly like Odysseus"), he eventually gives in to the randomness of his travels, and the book is all the better for it. While fighting his way onto crowded ferries or showing up in tiny hamlets with no hotel reservations, he has some realizations about the man he's following and about journeying as its own reward. Huler's book is not without flaws, but in essence, as he himself concludes about The Odyssey's continuing appeal, "the story has good bones." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Beats
Top Shelf Productions
*I love this site and am a huge fan of their graphic novels and comics. Check out their story and the link below, I promise you will not be disappointed.
Sophisticated Comics for the Modern Age.
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS publishes contemporary graphic novels and comics by artists of singular vision. Dedicated to championing veteran creators as well as finding and developing emerging talent, the Top Shelf library is anchored by such masters of the craft as Alan Moore (From Hell, with Eddie Campbell; Lost Girls, with Melinda Gebbie), Craig Thompson (Blankets, Carnet De Voyage), Andy Runton (Owly), Jeffrey Brown (Clumsy, Unlikely), Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison, Tricked), James Kochalka (American Elf, Super F*ckers), Robert Venditti (The Surrogates, with Brett Weldele), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), Matt Kindt (Super Spy), Renée French (The Ticking), and many more.
Who is Kazu Kibuishi?
Novel Destinations
Since summer is a time to travel, why not check out some literary landmarks. If you’re looking to indulge in literary adventure, you’ll find all the inspiration and information you need in Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks From Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West by Shannon Mckenna Schmidt (Author), Joni Rendon (Author), Matthew Pearl (Introduction) along with behind-the-scenes stories. Check out their website for more information and photos. http://noveldestinations.wordpress.com/
Marjane Satrapi
Chicken with Plums
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Florian Zeller
Review:
35th Novel
My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
Publisher Comments:
Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto 'survivors.'
So begins the unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an infamous American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny expose of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell.
Likely to be Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial novel to date, as well as her most boldly satirical, this unconventional work of fiction is sure to be recognized as a classic exploration of the tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of celebrity. In My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, the incomparable Oates once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of our contemporary culture.
Rivka Galchen
Monday, July 7, 2008
Etgar Keret
The Nimrod Flipout: Stories
by Etgar Keret- Review: The Nimrod Flipout includes stories about a talking fish, a little girl who loves all things that glitter, and the people who once lived on the moon “who could think their thoughts in any shape they wanted.” These stories are selections from his four story collections.
- What is so appealing about the thirty brief stories in The Nimrod Flipout? Some may love the brevity (thirteen of them are less than four pages long) and spurts of
- absurdism or irony in each story. I personally get excited when thinking about how his humor is translated and if we (English speakers/readers) are missing out on a few inside jokes. An overall strange, mellow and surreal experience worth taking.
Lynne Cox & Mark Kurlansky
*Here are my two latest "beach read" suggestions. Oh, how I cringe at that label, but "when in Rome... ."
Grayson
by Lynne Cox
From the Jacket: Grayson is Lynne Cox's first book since Swimming to Antarctica ("Riveting"—Sports Illustrated; "Pitch-perfect"—Outside). In it she tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).There's something frightening, and magical, about being on the ocean, moving between the heavens and the earth, knowing that you can encounter anything on your journey.
Excerpt from Chapter One:
The stars had set. The sea and sky were inky black, so black I could not see my hands pulling water in front of my face, so black there was no separation between the sea and the sky. They melted together.
It was early March and I was seventeen years old, swimming two hundred yards offshore, outside the line of breaking waves off Seal Beach, California. The water was chilly, fifty-five degrees and as smooth as black ice. And I was swimming on pace, moving at about sixty strokes per minute, etching a small silvery groove across the wide black ocean.
Usually my morning workouts started at 6 a.m., but on this day, I wanted to finish early, get home, complete my homework, and spend the day with friends, so I had begun at 5 a.m.
There were vast and silent forces swirling around me: strong water currents created by distant winds and large waves, the gravitational pull of moon and sun, and the rapid spinning of the earth. These currents were wrapping around me like long braids of soft black licorice, and I was pulling strongly with my arms, trying to slice through them.
As I swam, all I heard were the waves, rising and tumbling onto shore, the smooth rhythm of my hands splashing into the water, the breaths that I drew into my mouth and lungs, and the long gurgling of silvery bubbles rolling slowly into the sea. I slid into my pace, and I felt the water below me shudder.
It wasn't a rogue wave or a current. It felt like something else.
"In this fascinating story of cod, written in a flowing, poetic prose, the author takes you back to the ancient Basque fishermen and the recipes of the fourteenth century Taillevent, chef to Charles V of France, the eighteenth century Hannah Glasse, and the nineteenth century Alexander Dumas. This exceptional book entertainingly reveals the importance of this wonderful fish in world history". Jacques Pepin "In the story of the cod, Mark Kurlansky has found the tragic fable of our age — abundance turned to scarcity through determined shortsightedness. This classic history will stand as an epitaph and a warning". Bill McKibbenCod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World