Books
387 results
Page 27
Lennox Randon's 'Memoirs of a Dead White Chick'
Experiencing another life
Memoirs of a Dead White Chick is a lively, entertaining read. It considers issues around gender and race — and the darker side of America's history of them — without delving too deeply into their horrors.
Articles
5 minute read
Robin Kirman’s 'Bradstreet Gate'
A tangent to murder
Bradstreet Gate is a promising first novel, a book first about uncertainty, but also about the difference between even bright students’ fantasies and “actual, multifarious reality,” as well as the odd, formative nature of friendships made on the threshold of adulthood.
Articles
3 minute read
'The State We're In: Maine Stories' by Ann Beattie
Modern relationships
John Updike surely would have approved of Ann Beattie's pitch-perfect dialogue and her descriptions of the things we all define our existences by in her first collection of short stories in a decade.
Articles
3 minute read
Johannes Brahms and John Wayne
Johnny Broom and Marion Morrison
Can a 19th-century music master and a 20th-century movie star have anything in common?
Articles
5 minute read
'Words Without Music' by Philip Glass
From plumber to the gilded prizes with a ‘musical idiot’
Philip Glass's great experiment in sound helped release serious music from the grip of the serialists and academics and Aaron Copland — and opened Glass to older forms and orchestration, longer melody, and other traditions he would explore for the rest of his working life.
Articles
5 minute read
Jean Shepherd: An appreciation
The Great American Christmas Story
As an American humorist and storyteller, Jean Shepherd is right up there with Will Rogers and Garrison Keillor. Jerry Seinfeld has said that Shep “really formed my entire comedic sensibility.” Jerry probably grew up like me, listening to Shep dispense nightly wisdom on WOR radio in New York.
Articles
5 minute read
'SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome' by Mary Beard
Rome redux
By presenting a sampling of her insights into the history of Roman civilization in a spirited, learned, and accessible manner, Mary Beard's lecture was not just a good advertisement for and introduction to her long and massive study, it was good performance art.
Articles
3 minute read
Patrick J. Kennedy's 'A Common Struggle'
Code of silence, circle of shame
By speaking out and speaking up about mental illness and alcoholism in families, Patrick J. Kennedy is helping those of us who still feel shame, yet live with the fear of what these conditions will do to future generations if we keep silent.
Articles
5 minute read
Poet Eileen Myles at the Penn Book Center
On living twice
Eileen Myles’s reading at Penn Book Center gave fans a glimpse into the writing career of one of contemporary poetry’s biggest names. Her informal, conversational manner made the crowded reading feel unexpectedly intimate, making Myles’s words all the more powerful.
Articles
5 minute read
What I read on my summer vacation
From The Odyssey to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, here's what I read over the summer and how it did (or didn't) change my life.
Articles
5 minute read