Regina Spektor, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats (Deluxe Version)
Still quirky, but whipsmart and breathtakingThis is not the album where Regina Spektor breaks free of that “quirky” tag. There are too many playful tics (she’s sort of a homeschooled McFerrinite when...
View ArticleAugusten Burroughs, This Is How
Life lessons from a best-selling screw-up Who does Augusten Burroughs think he is, writing a how-to guide to life? I mean, after devouring a short-stack of his harrowingly brilliantly hilariously...
View ArticleDavid Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Part II)
His masterpiece finally gets the audiobook treatment, and it's a doozyIf you’re reading Infinite Jest, you’re not fucking around. Nine-hundred eighty-one pages, plus endnotes. Or, in audiobook terms:...
View ArticleDavid Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Part I)
His masterpiece finally gets the audiobook treatment, and it's a doozyIf you’re reading Infinite Jest, you’re not fucking around. Nine-hundred eighty-one pages, plus endnotes. Or, in audiobook terms:...
View ArticleInterview: Ben Fountain
In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the clock is ticking for the soldiers of Bravo Company. It’s Thanksgiving Day 2004, and after a long “victory tour” across the U.S. of A. — they’re all heroes, ever...
View ArticleKen Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Still crazy after all these years: Cuckoo's Nest turns 50Now a half-century old, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest remains a powerful chunk of American literature. Informed by personal experiences with...
View ArticleRyan Holiday, Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
A media con man proves there's a sucker blogging every minuteAs epiphanies go, Ryan Holiday’s came pretty late. By the time the self-styled media manipulator decided to come clean, he’d already spent...
View ArticleJesse Bering, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on...
Raising questions (among other things) about the science of human sexualityJesse Bering is sort of the Michael Pollan of boners; he’s read up, studied up, sought out, asked around and second-guessed...
View ArticleDavid Sedaris, Holidays on Ice
Arguably the most memorable non-Jesus-related Christmas story of all time.Chances are you’ve already heard, or read, “The Santaland Diaries.” David Sedaris true-but-ridiculous memoir of his stint as an...
View ArticleJean Shepard, A Christmas Story
Reading the book behind the classic movie is like discovering Muddy Waters after a lifetime of Rolling Stones.Listening to Jean Shepard’s A Christmas Story is a little like discovering Muddy Waters...
View ArticleHarris Wittels, Humblebrag
One of our funniest comedians reveals the fine art of Twitter boastingTwitter has made great strides in the field of famous/non-famous-people relations. Now not only can we make our tiny voices heard –...
View ArticleUnwrapping Sufjan’s Christmas Gift
Brooklyn indie darling Sufjan Stevens will probably never finish his one-album-for-every-state project (48 to go!), but his holiday-music series seems unstoppable. By now, you should know the drill:...
View ArticleSufjan Stevens, Silver & Gold
Brooklyn indie darling Sufjan Stevens will probably never finish his one-album-for-every-state project (48 to go!), but his holiday-music series seems unstoppable. By now, you should know the drill:...
View ArticleWarren Ellis, Gun Machine
A gripping, fast-paced, determinedly hardboiled detective yarnThere’s no easing into Gun Machine — Warren Ellis’s ferocious and deliciously twisted crime novel aims for the solar plexus from the start....
View ArticleSam Sheridan, The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love...
Seeking a plan for the end of the worldSam Sheridan could have been Batman. The dude is a former wilderness firefighter, merchant marine and EMT who graduated from Harvard, studied with a muay thai...
View ArticleRilo Kiley, rkives
Spanning the band's career to create a lovely and peculiar listening experienceRilo Kiley had a Hollywood sort of beginning: Two ex-child actors somehow found each other in the smog and smarm of Los...
View ArticleDick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious...
A masterful biography of a mobster folk hero that disentangles his convoluted historySome Bostonians used to like to paint James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, Jr. as a wicked-awesome folk hero. “He robbed...
View ArticleErnest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
[In which a late-blooming bookworm finally gets to the stuff he really should have read already.] The Plot, Basically: A bunch of erudite drunks drink in Paris, then meet up in Spain to get drunk and...
View ArticleAnnalee Newitz, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass...
Armageddon ItThere’s been no end to the deluge of books about weathering the apocalypse on the micro level — Sam Sheridan’s wild The Disaster Diaries might be the most fun — but hardly anybody goes...
View ArticleWho Are…Swearin’
File under: Neat, sweet, noisy guitar pop For fans of: The Breeders, The Get Up Kids, Built To Spill From: Brooklyn/Philly/Alabama Personae: Allison Crutchfield (guitar, vocals), Kyle Gilbride (guitar,...
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