Queen of America

A Mexican faith healer rules in the EE.UU.

Books Luis Alberto Urrea spent some 26 years on Queen of America (Little, Brown and Company, 496 pages, $25.99). The novel is understandably precious to the Mexican-American author as it borrows heavi   More

 

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 MICHAEL LOPEZ

I Am Better Than Your Kids

Funny, Maddox already graded his book for us.

Books Doting yuppie parents are annoying. Maddox, the one-name blogger and writer of the bestseller (!) The Alphabet of Manliness, has staged a bloodletting that’s worse than the migraine. In his nauseati   More

 

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 MAGGIE SUMMERS

Pulphead John Jeremiah Sullivan

American culture, with equal doses of insight and humor.

Books Writing compelling copy about the country’s largest Christian rock festival takes a rare breed of writer. Infusing the power of shared human experience and the complexity of multigenerational    More

 

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 EMILEE BOOHER

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

Tips for trips from the hubby of Ken Kesey’s ex.

Books The most interesting gem unearthed in James Fadiman’s book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide? Francis Crick, discoverer of DNA, perceived the double-helix shape while tripping balls on acid. The    More

 

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 MAGGIE SUMMERS

Chuck Palahniuk Damned

Butter rum Life Savers, and other visions of hell.

Books As the setting for a Chuck Palahniuk novel, hell seems strangely overdue. The Portland-bred novelist specializes in damaged protagonists in vile scenarios—people well deserving of eternal damnati   More

 

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 MICHAEL LOPEZ

Susan Orlean Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

Susan Orlean’s new shaggy dog story.

Books A more precise title for Susan Orlean’s new Rin Tin Tin book might have been The Lives and the Legend, seeing as the most cherished German shepherd in show business had at least 11 manifestations,   More

 

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 AARON MESH

Vernor Vinge The Children Of The Sky

A Hugo Award-winning novelist goes to the dogs.

Books Almost two decades have elapsed since Vernor Vinge won the Hugo Award for his epic 1992 space opera, A Fire Upon the Deep. Now he returns to Tines World with a sequel, The Children of the Sky (Tor, 4   More

 

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 MATT BUCKINGHAM

Q&A: Chuck Klosterman

Books Interviewing Chuck Klosterman is an intensely meta experience. For one thing, he’s an interviewer of some renown himself: His profiles on everyone from Britney Spears to Billy Joel to Steve Nash    More

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 MATTHEW SINGER

Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side

Eighty-nine years of trans-Atlantic tragedy.

Books Irish writer Sebastian Barry—twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, called by Salon “the best prose writer in the English language”—is one of the most ambitious writers today. His new b   More

 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 MATTHEW KORFHAGE

Neal Stephenson Reamde

Neal Stephenson writes another big black book.

Books Neal Stephenson’s new novel is a departure from the epic science-fiction sagas with which he transformed the genre in the 1990s and 2000s. Like some of his previous books, Reamde (William Morrow,   More

 

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 MATT BUCKINGHAM