Category Archives: Recs

Jul 13 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

Yesterday’s release of the Freeh Report investigating the actions of Penn State relating to Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse was greeted by predictably divisive voices. Some people are very upset by what they perceive to be an unbalanced power structure in Happy Valley that made it possible for such a potential coverup seem possible. Others—college football fans and PSU supporters/alumni—believe that the report goes a long way in exonerating Joe Paterno, showing that, if a coverup at all occurred, it was the work of the school’s athletic director, president, etc. Not Joe. These people are weirdos.

And they will likely buy Joe Posnanski’s forthcoming Paterno when it drops on August 21. I wrote about it a little bit in November of last year, and I’m pretty much sticking to that argument: if Posnanski chooses to write a defense of Paterno, he will lose some of his credibility (people already wince at him a little bit as it is). He tweeted last night about having aimed to write an “the most honest book” he could about Paterno. But it’s difficult to align that notion with his having written it before the Freeh Report, which contained some pretty damning information about Paterno and his colleagues at Penn State. If his book contains the how could Paterno know that Sandusky’s showering with a boy in 1998 was illicit since there was an investigation and no charges were filed and experts didn’t believe he fit the profile of a molester argument I’ve seen lately, then Posnanski should really brace for the worst possible reaction to all of this. Continue reading →

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Jun 18 2012
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Recs

Five Debuts to Watch

In a way, 2011 was the year of the debut: Chad Harbach, Karen Russell, Teju Cole, and Téa Obreht enchanted with first-time efforts. Though 2012 hasn’t offered any debuts on the literary level of Open City, or any with the blistering industry-wide hype to match The Art of Fielding, the second-half of this year will feature many notable debuts that you’ll be hearing a lot about—some of which we’re lucky enough to review.

Here are five to watch.

Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles (Random House, June 26)
The year’s representative from the Earth-Shattering Hype category might be this debut from Walker, a former editor at Simon & Schuster. The Age of Miracles has a bold premise: the earth has, inexplicably, started to slow. And all the while the eleven-year-old Julia must find a way to cope while being a person with those other problems—you know, the ones that don’t have an effect on the earth’s rotation, like losing friends or watching her family disintegrate. Early reviews have been stunningly positive, with Publisher’s Weekly calling it a “triumph of vision, language, and terrifying momentum.” Continue reading →

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May 25 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

The first time I read David Grann’s writing in The New Yorker, I felt like I stumbled onto something really special: a nonfiction writer whose work was totally and completely accessible to everyone. It started with “Trial of Fire,” then “A Murder Foretold.” I scanned backward, “The Chameleon,” and “Mysterious Circumstances.” Each impossibly heartbreaking stories, told with the kind of painstaking clarity and genuine interest that has made Grann so beloved.

Of course, there’s more of Grann to read—his older stories in the magazine (I’m particularly interested in his piece on Rickey Henderson, one of my favorite baseball players ever), and his book The Lost City of Z. I’ve felt for a few years now that I’ll soon take a lonely, shut-in vacation weekend someplace new and just bang that out in 48 hours.

When I heard this week that Grann had penned a new piece forThe New Yorker, I was thrilled. In the two hours it took me to read, I tried—not too hard, I ‘spose—to get some real work done; but I couldn’t tear myself away.

David Grann’s “The Yankee Comandante”

Grann tells the heartbreaking story of William Alexander Morgan, an American runaway whose role in the Cuban Revolution made him a hero in the early years of Castro’s rule. In the United States, he was an enigma. The CIA had no idea what to do with him, or why he was there, or what for. Though it’s a tale of international intrigue, set in the context of the Cold War and Cuba’s drive toward communism, its heart is in the humanity of it all: Morgan’s looney bravado, his romance with another Cuban revolutionary, his experiments breeding bullfrogs, his dreams for his new country.

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Apr 13 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

We’re not dead. Or anything like that.

We’re just busy. We promise! We still think about blogging—all the time.

Anyways, we’ve got a lot coming around the bend.  A few reviews in April, more in May, and then a summer full of reading and lounging and sipping and writing. It’s going to be a good time.

Roya Hakakian’s Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
It’s not Hakakian’s fault that some blurbs compared Assassins to Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood. As one should expect, there is no comparison. Still, Hakakian’s story is memorable, well told, and makes an allegedly vast conspiracy—involving the state-sponsored targeted assassination of the Iranian-Kurdish (is that the right way to say it?) diaspora all over the world—sound downright plausible. It makes your heart point, but in a rational, measured sort of way. Review forthcoming.

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Mar 23 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

As we ready ourselves for a week of new content — the aforementioned Beinart and Lakhous, along with a special guest review — I must admit that I’ve been enjoying the fake-summer heatwave, so my reading time has taken a hit. I have — like so many other like-minded folks — been absolutely engrossed in the Trayvon Martin tragedy. There is little more to say than this whole situation is very bad, in every imaginable way.

Many have recommended Teju Cole’s Atlantic piece, “The White Savor Industrial Complex,” a wonderfully measured, provocative-in-that-it’s-so-fucking-spot-on piece about not only the intrinsic wrongheadedness of Kony 2012 and the Invisible Children organization but also the attitude — or perhaps worldview — that enables such lily-white activism. It’s worth reading, not only because it’s a wonderful piece of writing, but because it links to the work of African scholars who take issue with the Kony 2012 movement. Continue reading →

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Mar 09 2012
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#fridayreads

Busy, busy times.

Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men
This is a big book. An ensemble of characters hailing from different backgrounds, all converging upon each other in the middle of the desert. Spanning from the beginning of America to today, Gods Without Men is about UFOs, the financial crisis, class issues, autism, the Iraq War, etc. In a literary culture featuring critics who might be a little too trigger-happy to hail a work as distinctly American, Kunzru’s fourth novel stands out. It might seem cliche to focus on the diversity of the characters — or to call that very quality of Gods Without Men American. But the sentiment is not the usual we-come-from-different-places-but-we’re-so-alike tripe. Rather, Kunzru shows that we’re really not. And that that’s okay.

Look for our review Monday.

 

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Feb 17 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

So it was my (Marnie’s) birthday this past weekend, and I got what will forever be known as the Cleverest Gift Ever Given: my best friend was flown in to Boston as a surprise! I was knocked onto my ear, or whatever the expression may be. I was very surprised. And while the weekend was consequently spent not reading a single word of Christopher Hebert’s The Boiling Season, which we’ll be reviewing at the end of the month, I did manage to pack plenty of celebration in, often even of the vaguely literary persuasion. While getting our pedicures in Beacon Hill, for example, I had the whole salon listening in on my synopsis of Ramona Ausubel’s No One Is Here Except All Of Us, admittedly a far cry from the stacks of Heidi Klum-related reading material provided near the foot dryer. (Seriously, though, I am sorely missing my subscription to People out here in Boston. How am I going to know if a hardscrabble town finds its hero in a mother of five who stuffs backpacks full of school supplies for underprivileged fourth graders?!)

Beyond that, it’s been a week of post-birthday celebration, Valentinular celebration, and subsequent 50%-off-all-chocolate celebration. And, as ever, trying to ignore these awful new memes. As a general rule of thumb, if someone posts something on Facebook and captions it “LOL SO TRUE,” there’s a good chance it’s not not nearly as true or amusing as the offending FB friend has claimed. But maybe I’m just embittered by years of false lawling and trigger-shy from a history of rickrolls.

But here’s a link that’s NOT a song about never giving you up. Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine has announced (via a really cool interactive bookshelf interface) their list of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids. I’ve read 38 of them! How about yourselves? The choices are clearly the product of a well thought-out selection process that accounted for an even spread of ages, demographics, authors, genres, and eras, and made the sound decision to choose only the best of the best of beloved authors’ books so as not to inundate the list with multiple titles. It’s Friday; treat your adult  selves to the nostalgia party that is Scholastic.

Now, to fly to Washington, D.C. Three-day weekends FTW!

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Feb 10 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

There should be a point in every too-smart young man’s life when he realizes he is more man than young man–this realization, ideally, pairing up nicely with the seventeenth or eighteenth birthday–and ought to, therefore, stop being mouthy, or immature, or petty, and instead start giving fellow man the benefit of the doubt. This would be for the broad benefit of society. Additionally, it should also benefit the man himself, as being a mouthy, immature, or petty grown-up renders this man eligible to the sort of societal punishment doled out for such on-the-grand-scale-small-but-insufferable-in-real-life meanderings: a real ass-kicking.

I’m an idiot. And I tend to act as though I’m still somewhere between thirteen and fifteen, those landlocked years that featured only one benefit: being able to say pretty much whatever I wanted to non-psychopathic folks, those who wouldn’t dare punch a thirteen- or fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kid in the face because, really, that’d be kind of stupid.

So I spent these years sitting in the bleachers section at Wrigley Field during Cubs-White Sox games, extolling the Southside in victory or just occasional run-scoring, without fear that any of the drunken adults around me would stoop to commit the crime of assaulting a minor. Because, at the end of the day, I’m just a kid!

If my son or sons turn out remotely like this, I’ll send them to military school. Continue reading →

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Jan 27 2012
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#fridayreads

It’s a busy season, winter. We’re up to our necks in upcoming reviews, and couldn’t be happier about it.  Our book pile has gone from a stack to a heap to a tower and is now wobbling precariously on its supports of Kwarteng, Hebert, and Winn Scotch, in an array whose subject matter is as far-flung as its authors.

In addition to digging into all of that, we’re trying to make our last-minute decisions on what books we should, respectively, give out on World Book Night.  (We’re running the gamut from Friday Night Lights to Oscar Wao at the moment. Any thoughts?) The deadline for requesting titles is February 1 — five days away — so don’t forget to sign up and participate in this amazing inaugural U.S. event.

Finally, a word on what we’re reading this weekend:

Ramona Ausubel’s No One is Here Except All Of Us, a haunting and beautiful debut about a tight-knit Jewish community that chooses to isolate itself as the horrors of World War II are made clear to them. Ausubel’s voice is so dense and narratively rich that readers can open to virtually any page and find passages that speak a heretofore unconsidered truth about love and the nature of war. Our review of this one is sure to carry mostly a tone of awe.

Other things that have our jaws dropping: how good Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was, and that we’ll now have to see advertisements that attach the words “Academy Award Nominee” to the name Jonah Hill.

 

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Jan 06 2012
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Recs

#fridayreads

Well, in a further consolidation of this blog’s original acronym, I, Marnie, have made the move to Boston. It’s oddly fitting that I type this in a coffee shop where, within five minutes of my arrival, I was asked by an Irish woman about where she might find the nearest bookstore. The best part was, I was able to tell her! (It was Brattle Book Shop, an extremely worthwhile destination for anyone willing to stomach its oft-sassy staff.) Already a literary local, y’all. Step two: adopt an Irish brogue. Step three: thank the staff of this coffee shop for playing “Bittersweet Symphony.”

At any rate, our hectic review month of January presses on. Here are the #fridayreads we’ve got on our recently relocated nightstands:

Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet

If the premise of a world where children’s language has disease-like effects on adults isn’t creepy enough, look into the book trailer for this upcoming release. Does it remind anyone else of the Salad Fingers cartoons of yesteryear? And if so, is there any way you’re not chomping at the bit to read it? Marcus presents a literary-minded rather than a principally plot-driven novel, and our review of The Flame Alphabet will be up later this month on pub day.

Ransom Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

We’ve got a guest review of this bestseller on the way, and we hope that said reviewer becomes a regular correspondent for YA literature — an area that remains largely untapped by your DBC|Reads crew.

Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The first installment in the Flavia de Luce series, I was given this book from a dear friend as a going-away gift. She is very excited for me to start in on what she says is the epitome of a charming, fun, adventurous read. When I asked around about Sweetness (being, as always, the last person on earth to read it), it turns out there is little else but praises sung for Bradley’s bestseller, and one friend responded to my inquiry by simply exclaiming “FLAVIAAAAAAAA!” at the top of her voice. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

….Speaking of ringing endorsements, this coffee shop’s playing “Feel Good Inc.” now.

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