This Year, Make Yourself a SoulPancake Forget New Year’s resolutions. Not only do they generally wear off with the year’s first hangover, but they’re really more akin to regret than to initiative. I mean, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be resolving to do something that you’re happy about not doing the year before, right? Right. Ditto [...]
Chip Kidd Revisits “The World’s Mightiest Mortal” The boy’s power derives from saying the name of the wizard that selected him to be the champion of good in the world. When he says the magic word a lightning bolt strikes down from the heavens and transforms the lad into “the world’s mightiest mortal.” That name, [...]
Monica Bellucci Delivers the Goods – and Then Some There are few things I dig better than pulling up to my 1923 bungalow and seeing a package awaiting me on my doorstep. When said package contains a book that’s as bold and as beautiful as Monica Bellucci (Rizzoli $60), well, let’s just say that the [...]
This Green Woman Will Completely Unnerve You Horror writer Peter Straub has written quite a few books – 17, in fact – most of which have made the bestseller lists. He’s written books with Stephen King (The Talisman, Black House), and he’s edited the work of H.P. Lovecraft (Tales). And while I’ve never read the [...]
Getting with the Book behind Boardwalk Empire The 500 Club, Paradise Café, Club Harlem, Little Belmont, The Bath and Turf Club, the Cliquot Club… just saying names of these fabled swing spots evokes an era of high vice and low blows. These were gambling dens, before the era of casinos, yet run wide open. Why? [...]
Gary Monroe Takes Us Back to Silver Springs Once upon another time, in a very different Florida, long before the age of in-your-face entertainment and the era of mass market wow, there existed a place unlike any other on earth. It was a sacred place, fed by a “life-giving stream” and flowing with “magical waters.” [...]
Michael Largo Gives Us God’s Lunatics Gotta hand it to Michael Largo — the cat really knows how to pick a subject. His first book of the new century — Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die — was a comically keen look at something everybody’s got in common. Fortunately, we all don’t [...]
A Half Dozen More Heist Books from Richard Stark Gotta luv the folks at University of Chicago Press. Not only have they decided to bring back Richard Stark’s belovedly badass Parker novels, but they’ve been doing so in sequence, with a niftily packed series that smacks back to the ’60s beginning and — Zeus-willing — [...]
Last week I had the great good pleasure of slipping into The Big Easy for a couple days courtesy of Cointreau, who’d flown me up to that storied city in order to interview Dita Von Teese. While I was there I made a point of strolling the French Quarter at daybreak so that I might [...]
Don Winslow’s Savage Savages Fucking dirty Don Winslow stole my opening line. Really. Crept into my numb skull and ripped it right from my imagination. The bastard. Of course I’ve had it kicking around in there for quite some time, and by rights it’s anybody’s for the taking. But hell, I didn’t think anybody else [...]
If cities are chicks – and if a city’s worth anything, it better be a chick – then L.A. is one shady lady. You might also say she’s a chick in heat. Wanton, insatiable, and faithful only as far as the next kiss, she’s the kinda chick a man will fall for, kill for and [...]
Dig the Dirty Realism of John Brandon Back 2008 a book came my way that had all the hallmarks of all the books I dig. It was violent, sure. But the violence was inevitable rather than gratuitous. It was also smart, subtle and sparingly written, in the manner of, say, James Crumley or early Richard [...]
