Christopher Buckley’s latest novel, They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, is half brutal satire of Washington politics and half quirky/absurdist indie movie waiting to happen. And it’s even pretty funny. As a basic litmus test for whether you’ll like this book, think about Thank You For Smoking. If you liked it, great, this is very similar […]
Zis book, she is beautiful. No, truly, despite ze cheesy French accent, I’m 100% serious. Sacre Bleu, A Comedy D’Art is funny (Chris Moore’s signature fare), but it’s also sweet, and loving in a way that Moore’s work … isn’t always. I love it. I really, really do. We start with Vincent Van Gogh’s murder. […]
Lyndsay Faye’s book, The Gods of Gotham, is a historical fiction murder mystery. Yeah. You heard me. A Historical Fiction Murder Mystery. Does that not sound like an answered prayer to anyone else? I mean, I’m not usually much for murder mysteries and things (there’s more interesting stuff for me to read, the re-read value […]
Ray Bradbury was an extraordinary writer. He died on June 5th, 2012, at the age of 91 after a lengthy illness. He was one of my favorite contemporary writers. He was a giant of science fiction, and more importantly, of imagination—of thought, creativity, and will. He wrote in almost every form—books, essays, poems, operas, teleplays, […]
There are some books that are plot heavy. You know which ones I mean—the ones that could fuel two seasons worth of soapy opera all by their dark, dramatic, twisted lonesomes. And then there are the books that meander. While the plot-heavy books are racing at breakneck speed to cram everything in, these books give […]
I have mixed feelings about Sam Leith’s novel, The Coincidence Engine. The basic plot is that there’s this genius/madman mathematician named Nicolas Banacharski, who may or may not have started trying to find the mathematical proofs for an “engine” that would make the highly improbable/impossible, possible. Naturally, what exactly has happened to him is shrouded […]
Arcadia is Lauren Groff’s second novel and it’s wonderful. I read Groff’s first novel, The Monster’s of Templeton, years ago, and I liked it quite a bit. But I love Arcadia more. The book’s about Bit—the first-born child of a hippie commune called Arcadia—and his life (in Arcadia and Outside, as a child and an […]