Staff Picks
March 22, 2012
John Leonard Died for Our Sins 6
by Bill Morris
I’m glad I haven’t read anything Leonard wrote about Nixon after 1975. My guess is it would be like watching someone empty an Uzi into a lifeless Clydesdale.
January 11, 2012
Staff Pick: John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead 16
by Bill Morris
Every word I say or write about John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead turns instantly to mush. Yes, he’s that good.
November 23, 2011
Staff Pick: Steve Erickson’s Zeroville 5
by Emily St. John Mandel
Zeroville is a work of surpassing strangeness and beauty. Vikar is possesed by movies, and he’s come to the promised land. He has a tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on his shaved head, a red tear drop inked below an eye.
October 18, 2011
Staff Pick: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall 2
by Edan Lepucki
Let me get this out of the way: I hate running. I never enjoyed it: it hurt, it was boring, and I always worried about getting a sunburn.
October 12, 2011
Guilty Pleasures: Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy & Wendy and the Lost Boys 0
by Michael Bourne
Author Julie Salamon is blessed with that rare talent for not missing the forest for the trees while at the same time being able to see the trees.
September 20, 2011
Staff Pick: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau 2
by Mark O'Connell
By the end of the first page, you have learned everything you are ever going to know about the events on which the book focuses. What Queneau does do, however, is re-narrate this same scenario a further 98 times, in a series of distinct styles.