Tag Archives: books

We neglected Columbus on Columbus Day (other than a discussion of Mayor Bloomberg’s decision not to march in NYC’s parade). Gary Farber points us to a rather grim assessment of Columbus in the New Yorker: Columbus was one of history’s great optimists. When he read in Marco Polo that the …

Joni Mitchell latest to dump on recording industry: The veteran singer/songwriter, on the promotional trail for a new album, says she is “ashamed” to be part of the music business and may stop recording. “I just think it’s a cesspool,” the 58-year-old folk-rock icon said in the latest issue of …

Founder/host of seminal radio show coined phrase “Elvis has left the building.” Logan began in radio when he was 16, after winning a contest to become an announcer on KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, Mrs. Logan said. He began producing the “Hayride,” a country music show performed before a live KWKH …

The heroes (and heroine) of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (America’s Best Comics) should be familiar to any school kid who’s looked to old blood-and-thunder storytelling as a means of meeting Classic Lit reading requirements: Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Hawley (Invisible Man) Griffin, Henry Jeckyll/Edward Hyde and resolute Mina Murray …

I love A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the funniest, most empathetic looks at misfits and outsiders ever written, that blessedly never dips into sentimentality. Ignatius P. Reilly is a vexing, troubling, brilliant character who represents the late author’s alter ego, ultimately triumphant. The dialogue is brilliant and dead real …

NY Times mag piece on Barker’s new imaginary world for children: Walking into what Barker calls the inside of his head — that is, his private art studio — is like tripping into a punk-rock version of Oz. Brightly colored oil paintings, some of them as wide as 13 feet, …

Chronicler of WWll succumbs to lung cancer at 66: Ambrose spent much of his career as a relatively little known history professor until he burst onto the best-seller’s list with his 1994 book “D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.” Based in large part on interviews …

WaPo’s Jim Hoagland celebrates Imre Kertesz’s Nobel Prize in literature: Imre Kertesz is a Holocaust survivor, an East European who was persecuted under communism, a free man since 1989 and this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Who says book critics never get it right? Sweden’s remarkable literary …

Phoebe Hoban looks at two new books on single women, and finds the tone defensive: defending that which no longer needs defending: Consider two books on the subject that have just come out this month that try to validate this lifestyle both historically and anecdotally, as if it were a …

Ex-Jackson brother-in-law shocked by monkey: Michael Jackson and his family practiced a bizarre ritual in which they sacrificed a live monkey. This is just one of the allegations made by sister LaToya Jackson’s former husband, Jack Gordon, who has penned The Jackson Family: The True Story Of The Most Powerful …