From the monthly archives:
Debut novels are not supposed to turn out like this one. They’re supposed to flop around on the table, show a few glimpses of potential, and then leave you waiting for the next, better effort. Last Night in Montreal is an accomplishment unto itself. At its heart, it’s a story about communication and the enormous [...]
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Whoa, a non-fiction book. Yes, it’s true, I sometimes read stories that actually happened. In this case, though, that old cliche that the truth is stranger than fiction might be apt. Richard Rushfield went to Hampshire College in the late 1980s, when it was at the height of its reign as an alternative education hippie [...]
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A few weeks ago, we asked you to tell us what you wanted for the holidays this year. Some of you responded with videos telling us what books would make your wish list. In all, we got five entries, and they were all great. The winner, in the end, was the first person to enter, [...]
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I’ve written often and at length about Dan Chaon’s masterful novel Await Your Reply. Someone called this book “the first great novel written about the internet.” I think this is probably true (if there’s a better novel about the internet out there, I haven’t yet read it), and if it is true, we all have [...]
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Can a book be a coming of age novel if nobody really comes of age in it? Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor is many things — smart, funny, weird — but I don’t really think anybody goes through a radical, life-altering experience. This isn’t Stand By Me. Benji Cooper is a dichotomy, a walking contraction — [...]
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The Great Perhaps is set in the days leading up to the 2004 presidential election. It couldn’t have been set at any other time. If I might delve into a little bit of personal history here, I think the incredible anxiety, fear and anger that so many of my friends felt as that election approached [...]
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All hail the comic novel! 2009 might go down in my personal history as the year I finally accepted that I just really love a funny novel. Steve Hely’s How I Became a Famous Novelist didn’t disappoint. The adventures of Peter Tarslaw, writer of fraudulent college admissions essays and treacly, sentimental novels, is a must-read [...]
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SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t read this book, stop reading this post and go read it. Do not read the flap of the book, just start at the beginning and go. Seriously. Then you can come back here and tell me what you thought. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s proceed. Michelle [...]
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What an incredibly strange year. People in the national media said “tea bagger” on a near daily basis. Glenn Beck rose to national prominence. Tiger Woods was exposed as a philandering slut (possibly redundant?). The New Orleans Saints are threatening to run the table in the NFL, and Michael Jackson died, causing mass hysteria online. [...]
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It’s pretty busy here at the store, as you might imagine, so the blog has been a bit slow lately. In lieu of a real post here today, I will point you to my Year in Reading post at The Millions, where I write, briefly, about Stoner by John Williams and Here Comes Everybody by [...]
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