Good Poems & Good Poems for Hard Times – Edited by Garrison Keiller
For regular NPR listeners, Keiller’s poem selections will be familiar. If not, perhaps you will remember the (minor) flap in the news earlier this year when Kansas radio station wanted to pull Keiller’s 5 minute poetry spot …
Neil Gaiman
I am shocked and apologetic that I forgot to review this last month. Perhaps I forgot because I read it at the very beginning of the month – or perhaps my mind was going “wub wub wub” from having seen Gaiman/McKeen’s movie MirrorMask. SEE IT IF YOU …
Archeology Magazine
A truly fantastic magazine. Articles range from current digs in Iran recently opened for the first time in 30 years, to an urban archeological dig being done through the floor of a room in a fully functioning motel. No one country or time period receives any special emphasis. …
Jon Krakauer
Krakauer has fast become one of my favorite non-fiction/journalistic writers. A writer for various travel magazines, Krakauer has turned a number of his articles into full size books. Under the Banner of Heaven follows the trial of Ron and Don Lafferty, two Mormon brothers who believed God had …
Gregory Crewdson
Crewdson’s collection of photos are eerie, surreal and otherworldly. His mundane scenes of suburbia are turned into half-remembered nightmares. A bright stream of light shoots from a gardening shed, a group of people heap flowers into a mound, a woman floats in her half submerged living room. Creepy …
Laurie Notaro
The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, We Thought You Would Be Prettier, I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies I have Told), Autobiography of a Fat Bride
Notaro’s books are the sort of books that I know I should slow down and save some for later, but it is …
Amy Borkowsky
Do you hear little voices, telling you what to do, critiquing and nagging at all hours? You may be cracking up, or perhaps you’ve been listening to NPR playing some clips from Amy’s Answering Machine (the cd). The author, Amy Borkowsky, has been stricken with one of the …
Shoichi Aoki
I loved the original book by Aoki, Fruits – a collection of photos of Japanese street fashion. Fresh Fruits is the same format, kids in their truly outlandish fashions with a small chunk of commentary at the bottom. At first, I skipped over the rather hard to read …
Terry Pratchett
Life would be a much bleaker place without Terry Pratchett. Thud! has all the usual happy Pratchettism, Vimes et al., lots of silly jokes and now a tie-in to his children’s book “Where’s my Cow?”. The final reading of the book – “IS THIS MY COW? NO!”, …
Patrick Mauries
After reading Preston and Child’s Cabinet of Curiosities, I couldn’t resist finding out more about cabinets of curiosities (the precursor to the modern museum). This gorgeous, weird book is a history of the cabinets and their weird contents – everything from sculpture, to shells and minerals, fake …
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
This is an all-time favorite of mine. We first got this as an audiobook for a car trip. My husband and I found ourselves glued to our seats in a fast-darkening parking lot, listening to “just one more bit.” Engrossing, tense, fascinating – a true …
Suze Orman
A short and sweet book on not being horribly broke for the rest of your life, with very nice real life common sense advice. Most of her advice was the usual “pay off credit cards and save for retirement” stuff, but Orman did have some interesting ideas of …
