Tag Archives: books

A REALLY avid American Harry Potter fan bid $45 large for a handwritten card from J.K. Rowling which reveals answers to the forthcoming book number five: The unidentified buyer made the winning bid Thursday for the card, handwritten by author J.K. Rowling as a charity fund-raiser. The money will be …

The most recent Comics Journal (#248) has a sharp column by R.C. Harvey on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning novel about the early years of the comic book industry, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Picador USA). In it, comics scholar Harvey basically fact-checks Chabon’s book – which focuses on the …

I think astrology is baseless blather: not that there couldn’t be some cause and effect between the gravity of the stars and planets and whatever else in going on in astrological “readings,” but being able to predict anything concrete about life on this earth from such gross measurements seems implausible …

It’s lonely at the top: that’s the message of the new Britney Spears book and DVD, Stages, a behind-the-scenes view of life on the road: She eats alone. She paces her hotel suites alone at night. While other stars surround themselves with helpers, Spears packs her own suitcases and puts …

It’s been a week and a half since I mentioned the Wizard of Oz/Harry Potter connection: time to get back to it. We saw and enjoyed the new Harry Potter movie over the Thanksgiving weekend, and my daughter has latched onto The Wizard of Oz as her new fave DVD …

With her legal problems swarming like avenging dust balls, I find I dislike Martha Stewart less now. Perhaps it’s simply because she has been keeping a lower profile so I haven’t had to deal with her craft-nazi smugness, or perhaps she is less smug now with the prospect of prison …

Halfway into the ten-part Taken, Spielberg’s mini-series has established a herky-jerky rhythm: ten minutes of rotely written soap opera followed by ten of good ol’ Muldery paranoia followed by scenes of melodramatic villainy that would probably be called “comic book” by a viewer less appreciative of well-realized comics wickedness. Moving …

If you don’t read Jan Herman daily you should – he’s everything an arts and entertainment writer should be: sophisticated but not snotty, worldly but not jaded, experienced but not worn out, funny, and with a fierce integrity. Today he outdoes himself with a wistful but not cloying reminiscence about …

I must have been on drugs: I haven’t mentioned the brilliant and exquisite Virginia Postrel in some time. I have been a fool. Virginia has a terrific column in the NY Times on the history of information: Indeed, a new book argues, to understand why the West not only grew …

The cover to Mystic Funnies #3 (Fantagraphics) is reassuringly familiar to anyone who’s followed underground comix guru Robert Crumb all these years: a car-choked urban setting where Flakey Foont – Crumb’s whiney everyshlub – is being lectured by a typically statuesque femme. “Out of the pain comes the pleasure, out …