Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
reviewed by Greg Mortimer
You don't have to be the only child of one of San Francisco's wealthiest couples, have your childhood all but ruined by your parents' bitter divorce, and spend years at New England boarding schools to write a great memoir - but it sure does help. Sean Wilsey's Oh the Glory of It All transcends these familiar staples of painful, privileged White Guiltdom and gives us an honest, compulsively readable book that spans just about every emotion you could think of. >>>more
Officer Friendly and Other Stories by Lewis Robinson
reviewed by Greg Mortimer
"Peter walked into the store in his wet bathing suit. He'd never been to Point Allison before - it was on the western edge of that remote, depressed part of Maine that didn't get much traffic." So begins Lewis Robinson's 2003 debut collection of stories, with a man who lives not just on the edge of a continent, but, as the opening story "The Diver" unfolds, on the edge of himself. As with Peter, Robinson throws his characters (mostly teenage or young adult men who all live in Maine) into experiences that test their reason, friendship, loyalty, and love - but ultimately awaken their sense of self-purpose, prodding them into the difficult point between complacence with their unextraordinary circumstances and a consciousness of how to live more inspired lives in an uninspiring setting. >>>more
New and Selected Poems by Michael Ryan
reviewed by Ellen Cantrell
Michael Ryan tells stories in verse. He harnesses the gift of any great storyteller; he can live inside someone else’s head, he can tell the story of a stranger and make it his own. Then, he makes it yours. Poetry has never required a scene or a plot, but Ryan’s latest collection, New and Selected Poems, combines narrative and verse effortlessly. >>>more
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
reviewed by Derek Thompson
Malcolm Gladwell writes small books about big ideas. His non-fiction debut The Tipping Point sought to dissect the science of what makes things popular. This brief study of how nascent ideas can become social epidemics represented both a warning against social engineering and a how-to manual for public relations and marketing firms. Gladwell's little book became one of the most influential of the decade. >>>more
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
reviewed by Greg Mortimer
In 1959, Chicago native Saul Bellow (who got his degree in anthropology from Northwestern and died earlier this year at the age of 89) published a novel called Henderson the Rain King. While not as commercially or critically successful as Herzog or The Adventures of Augie March, it would eventually be named by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. And yet, while Bellow's name remains a giant in American literature, this transcendental and ecstatically written novel seems to have slipped under the modern literary radar. >>>more
The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton
reviewed by Eric Anderson
I don't get out much. While I claim to be both a dreamer and a traveler, mostly I'm a cubicle dweller, circling 21st century exurban corporate America locales in an endless commute: home, kids to school, work, home, chain restaurants and strip malls and big box outlets flowing past my windshield like a trip through logoworld. Sure, I've criss-crossed the American west on the interstates and two-lane blacktops for 25 years now, but until last summer I'd never been off North America, unless you count floating on a Boogie board in the Pacific Ocean. >>>more
Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
reviewed by Laura Quest
I expected to see a certain amount of multi-layered, self-indulgent narrative between the covers of Chuck Palahniuk's The Diary, being that most of the ideas I feel guilty enough to write in my own diary are laden with such things. And certainly this is the case. Palahniuk makes fine use of every type of diary-like literary device one could think up to introduce his main characters. He structures the novel around the very tricky perspective that people seem to develop in diaries (and with themselves, for that matter). In fact, he develops a slew of his own devices that are clever in a way a Palahniuk novel must be in order to support his elusive ideology and quirky characters. >>>more