|
|
|---|
Comedian Demetri Martin wrote a book called This is a Book and while many comedians attempt to translate their humor onto the printed page and fail, this one might actually work. All the Mitch Hedberg fans in the room might be saying, "Isn't that the guy who is basically ripping off Mitch's style?" Well...a bit. But he also has his own thing, using charts and graphs and crude sketches to accenuate his funny. That kind of visual humor is just the kind of thing that can fill up a book quite well. I for one am looking forward to laughing it up.
If you are in Houston May 19th, there's an excellent local writer reading at Kaboom Books. If you happen to be in Los Angeles, Bret Easton Ellis will be waiting for you at Skylight Books with his pen and new book, Imperial Bedrooms ready.
If you haven't been reading Ethel Rohan's stories in FRiGG, Hobart, PANK, Pindeldyboz, Bound off Magazine, etc, here's your chance. Her first collection of stories, Cut Through the Bone is now out from Dark Sky.
Ethel gets to the heart of a story with deft precision. Her hauntingly beautiful stories dig at you long after you've read them. And what would make a better Christmas present for your angsty goth teenage niece?
Working Backwards from the Worst Moment in my Life
Rob Roberge, who wrote Drive and More Than They Could Chew, has a new collection of stories out. Want a Christmas present that will make your nephew think you are the shit or your grandpa think you are a sicko, then buy this book.
Steve Almond likes it!
"Rob Roberge is a modern master of the down-and-out-that-just-got-worse. His stories are dark and thrilling. They take hold of the reader like some bad, bracing dope and don't let go until you feel the full measure of your own humanity. Prose this carefully wrought and true puts him in the tradition of Bukowski, Hammett, and Denis Johnson."
Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal, Candyfreak, The Evil BB Chow and Not that You Asked: Essays.
I'm an author now! Like Ernest Hemingway and Fyodor Dostoevsky!
-Sarah Silverman
If you like your comedy funny, you'll like Sarah Silverman. Her memoir about her days at Saturday Night Live, childhood and wetting the bed until she was a teenager is out now. Her hold no punches style is used to its maxiumum potential, slipping in serious issues and intimate details between all the comedy.
Author of Some Girls, Jillian Lauren, read at Kaboom Books on Friday May 28th. Munching on snow cones of various flavors, (lime thai basil included!) the healthy crowd listened intently as Jillian read
two passages from the memoir. Like in the book, she threw in just the right amount of humor in her reading. Jillian answered a few questions before it started pouring down, cooling us from the summer sun, but begging us to get electricuted. Once everything moved inside, Jillian signed copies of the book, quickly selling out of them. Kaboom Books, which also hosts a monthly (but off for the summer) reading for NANO Fiction, is a narrow, well-stocked store which provided a muggy, crowded but intimate atmosphere. The night ended with our stomachs filled with tofu spring rolls and colorful pastries, a copy of Some Girls (for some, multiple copies) tucked under our arms.
I always say writers should make trailers for their books. Jillian Lauren is all on that. Her memoir looks awesome. Notice the Margaret Cho blurb.
Available April 27th!
Rogue Disney executives, hackers, toast-making robots, 3D printers, and interactive rides on abadoned Wal-Marts. Intrigued yet? Cory Doctorow's new novel Makers has all this and more. A frequent activist for copyright issues, Doctorow has been nominated for most of the sci-fi awards.
The buzz on the web is that Makers is Doctorow's best work yet. The novel is available free on the author's website, as a Creative Commons download.
He does not normally dress this way.
For one, Mr. Nader has been writing a book. Only the Superrich Can Save Us is a fictional account of what might happen if all the billionaires of the world decided to use their money to make great changes in the world. Nader calls the book neither a novel nor non-fiction but a "practical utopia." This doesn't appear as heady as Chomsky so may be more accessible for more people. At the same time, we can't expect stunningly beautiful prose out of him. The idea is what makes this book. If you're willing to invest hundreds of pages to a mighty unplausible "what if?" then this is the ticket. Definitely worth flipping through in the bookstore at the very least.
Two of my interests, Jonathan Safran Foer and vegetarianism just collided in a most delectable way. Foer has come out with a new book called Eating Animals. The dude breaks down how much of our meat comes from factory farming and just how fucked up that kind of farming is.
I stumbled onto this when another one of my loves (though this one is more of the kind I don't tell most people) Ellen Degeneres was interviewing said author. If he had gone on The View those broads would have torn him apart, but Ellen really engaged him and listened actively. The crowd was totally bummed out, because Foer didn't try to balance tales of horror in the factory farm with enough jokes. The crowd was informed they were all receiving a copy of the book and they kind of groaned a fake enthusiasm. Seconds later, they were told they would receive some goodies from Mariah Carey, perfume, CD, etc. and gave out a real cheer.
Still, Foer eloquently discussed veganism in front of a room full of ladies that may never have heard the word. Props. The cover is in what has become typical Foer bright and in your face style. How curious does it make you that the man behind Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is tackling the ugly, messy issue of animal cruelty?
Curious enough to buy it? Well then, Eating Animals is on sale for only 15 bucks.
If you keep up with ESPN's Bill Simmons' columns, you know he's been slacking on said columns for the past year to crank out a massive book about basketball. If you don't, you probably aren't aware how funny and insightful he can be. Not as stiff and cliche-happy as most sportswriters, Simmons infuses pop culture (90210 and Karate Kid seem to come up all the time) and fun into sports as well as niblets of his personal life.
The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy hits shelves tomorrow. The 700 plus page mammoth of a book should provide some top-notch entertainment and choice inside information. Malcolm Gladwell of Blink fame provides the foreword.
Take a look at this excerpt where Bill Simmons meets his longtime rival for a powwow at a topless pool.
