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Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

November 3, 2009 admin 0

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark: Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we […]

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New Today: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell

November 3, 2009 admin 0

This is a brand new and greatly improved edition of a modern classic: the National Book Award-winning The Great War and Modern Memory (Sterling). Originally published in 1975, it was named one of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th century by the Modern Library. In his preface, author Paul Fussell explains his book succinctly: This book is about the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 and some of the […]

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Art & Culture: Best Music Writing 2009 edited by Greil Marcus

November 2, 2009 admin 0

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Best Music Writing anthologies edited by music journalist and scholar Daphne Carr and published by Da Capo. As befits an anniversary edition, this anthology is stunning with contributions from some of the very top names in music writing, and letters, as well. As guest editor Greil Marcus points out, Best Music Writing 2009 is not meant to be an almanac: It is not a record of the best […]

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Zombie Success Story Tops One Million

October 26, 2009 admin 0

The usually elegant Three Rivers Press is quick to point out that their “2003 sleeper hit,” The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, was at the vanguard of the current zombie movement. From a Three Rivers Press release: The Zombie Survival Guide has spurred countless other books on zombies, along with its own line of products such as The Zombie Survival Guide Journal that gives people a chance to record their to-do lists and survival […]

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Art & Culture: Page Fright by Harry Bruce

October 7, 2009 admin 0

Readers are more interested in process than product we’re told be author Harry Bruce in his vastly entertaining new work, Page Fright: Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (Douglas Gibson Books). Says Bruce: But process, which is what this book is all about, includes not only tools but the rooms in which writers work; the number of hours, in each day or night, that they imprison themselves in those rooms; and the number of words, […]

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New Today: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violini

October 1, 2009 admin 1

“Sometimes the world’s magic leaks out,” Juanita Rose Violini writes in her introduction to Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored (Weiser Books). “Mystery does that; it can never be truly contained. Jagged cracks occasionally split the carefully laid constructs of our safe and predictable lives, and the unexplained tumbles forth into our awareness.”If this is not something that you know for certain, it is something that you’ve always suspected: that the thing […]

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Art & Culture: How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll by Elijah Wald

September 29, 2009 admin 0

It’s important to know going in that How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (Oxford University Press), doesn’t really have much to do with the Beatles at all. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it has everything and nothing to do with them. What the book really does is take on everything we think we know about popular music because, as author Elijah Wald tells […]

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Art & Culture: Slang: The People’s Poetry by Michael Adams

September 18, 2009 admin 0

Michael Adams is that guy. He teaches English language and literature at the university level. He is the editor of a magazine that focuses very tightly on speech. He is the author of a book on the slang of the now defunct hit television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, you’ve got it right: Adams is a word geek. So, clearly, if he writes a book called Slang: The People’s Poetry, it’s not going to […]

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New This Week: The Masonic Myth and Occult America

September 11, 2009 admin 0

During this time of economic turmoil, next week Da Vinci Code author, Dan Brown, is expected to pull a J.K. Rowling by single-handedly hauling the publishing industry out of the toilet. And, speaking of toilets, even though lots of reviewers will inevitably heap scorn on Brown’s latest offering, The Lost Symbol (Doubleday), a lot of bookstores are hoping history will repeat itself and that sometimes lazy book buyers will come thundering into their stores ready […]

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Art & Culture: Canada by Shelagh Rogers & Mike Grandmaison

September 1, 2009 admin 1

Canada (Key Porter) takes my breath away. This is the book so many others have tried to make without this kind of success. A book that includes all of a vast and beautiful country and attempts to showcase it in a way that will have meaning for those who live in the country and those who admire it from afar. Canada is a gorgeous book. Mike Grandmaison’s photos are — without exception — breathtaking as […]