Trenton Lee Stewart and Catherine Jinks
Like all sequels to excellent books, these two YA titles are a teeny bit of a letdown – primarily because they aren’t the first book. Both take a few chapters to hit their stride, Genius Squad more so. However, I had no complaints by …
Ellen Forney
Sweet! Forney illustrates “How to be a Fabulous Fag Hag” with Margaret Cho, “How to Twirl Your Tassels in Opposite Directions” with Teresa Dulse, Forney’s almost-kinda date with Camille Paglia and her friend’s incredibly embarrassing meeting with Tom Waits. Heckuva good collection.…
Neil Gaiman
It’s Neil, ’nuff said. No? OK, a sweet, funny and often sad book about a baby named Nobody who grows up in a graveyard, raised by the kindly dead. Beautiful and otherworldly as only Gaiman can write.…
Joseph Epstein
Snobbery often entails taking a petty, superficial, or irrelevant distinction and, so to say, running with it.
Epstein’s study of snobbery should be considered a guilty pleasure, replete with snarky little personal stories. His main premise is snobbery is a strangely unique phenomenon created by Americans. Our democracy …
Lisa Katayama
Urawaza is a secret or trick to do things better – life-hacking. This collection of Urawaza offers a myriad of ideas to fix and do things in a cheap and easy way – often as alternatives to a more standard way. For instance, have glass all over the …
Christian Lander
Oh. My. God. I am so white. I mean, this shouldn’t be a surprise, seeing as you can see my veins in face during winter, but damn. We had the great pleasure of seeing Lander talk at the WI Book Festival a few weeks ago. He seemed …
James Scurlock
Wowza, talk about a 21st century Cassandra! Written as a companion to his movie, Maxed Out, Scurlock includes the stories and data too complex for the big screen. Published in 2007 the book was written in ’05 and ’06. Scurlock saw the storm clouds of predatory lending, easy …
Maria Dahvana Headley
I’m not sure what made me pick this book up. Like the musical Avenue Q, it is on the surface remarkably funny – chock full of those embarrassing/funny stories that happen to frequently. However, once you look through the veneer of humor Headley’s story is both sad …
Laurie Notaro
Yeah! Another Laurie Notaro book! If you haven’t read Notaro’s collections of short essays or her novel There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell get a copy in preparation of the long dark winter. No matter how embarrassing or awful the situation, Notaro makes the …
August “Gustl” Kubizek
The Young Hitler I Knew is by far the most engrossing book I have ever read about Hitler. Gustl Kubizek was a man in a position no one else had ever been – he was Hitler’s best friend from age 15-19. In all likelihood, he was also …
Mike Carey and Glenn Fabry
This Neil Gaiman approved graphic novel of Neverwhere was excellent. Slight variations in the story line and an occasional missing character don’t affect the overall story arc. The novel has gorgeous art and the depictions of Door, de Carabas and Hunter are particularly good. Any …
Michael Gates Gill
Michael Gates Gill is a man who would make a prime case study for U-Turn, Green with Envy and House Lust. Gill, the son of a wealthy “New Yorker” writer, grew up with anything and everything he could want. His family lived in a brownstone …
Shira Boss
Not to flog a dead horse or anything… Green with Envy was quoted in House Lust, so I couldn’t resist reading this book too. Boss starts her book with her personal story. She and her unemployed husband worry over bills and try to subsist in New York …
Daniel McGinn
Boy howdy what a timely book! As the prices of houses plummet and loans are near-impossible to attain, this book makes it crystal clear where it all went wrong. Actually, House Lust author McGinn makes the claim that he will do nothing of the sort in his book. …
Bruce Grierson
The epically long title of this books reflects the equally massive amount of information in this book. A hair under 300 pages it manages to pack in a dense, and truly fascinating, amount of information. A u-turner is someone who makes a radical change in their life – …
Bill Steen, Athena Steen, Eiko Komatsu, Photos by Yoshio Komatsu
This book is a massive collection of hand-built homes and buildings from the around the world. Loosely grouped by material and use, the photos and brief text show a world of housing totally unlike anything we see in the US. …
