Book Review: The Annotated Poe
/A sumptuously illustrated and annotated new edition of the classic short works of Edgar Allan Poe
Read MoreThe Viking Portable Library!
/Our books today are samples from the delightful old line of Viking Portables that flourished in the postwar years and whose compact, jam-packed format has by now entirely disappeared and, given the givens of our post-literate society, will likely never appear again. They’re instantly recognizable on the shelves of used bookstores, these Viking Portables: they’re […]
Read MoreAnother “Bucket List” in the Penny Press!
/The lad mags I love so much have a love of their own: so-called “bucket lists”! For some unaccountable reason, the core readership of magazines like Esquire, GQ, Outside, Details, and Men’s Journal – over-monied young white male douchebags – just love “bucket list” features designed to help them tick off the last few things […]
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Deluxe Emma!
/Some Penguin Classics prompt a sigh of relief, especially after the loosey-goosey anything-goes Week O’ Penguins we’ve had this time around (Ray Russell, I ask you!). After watching a coked-up gag-writer like Charles Beaumont pull down his own Penguin Classic (if that happened in a typical three-page Charles Beaumont story, he’d be super-honored until he […]
Read MorePenguins on Parade: Ford and Webster!
/Some Penguin Classics seem like classroom-ready compromises, as in the case of Jane Kingsley-Smith’s new paperback combining the two most prominent plays by John Ford with the two most prominent plays by John Webster. Why, you can almost hear being asked in some Penguin editorial meeting, should we force students to buy “complete plays” editions […]
Read MoreBook Review: Magna Carta
/A slim and intensely good new history of King John and the creation of the Great Charter
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Penguin Arthur Miller!
/Some Penguin Classics are so physically beautiful they stifle dissent, at least temporarily. This is certainly true for most of the “Deluxe” titles (again, we shall not turn our thoughts toward a Deluxe edition of The Liars’ Club, lest those thoughts become impure …), and wow, even in that company, one of the newest Penguin […]
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Penguin Arthur Miller!
/Some Penguin Classics are so physically beautiful they stifle dissent, at least temporarily. This is certainly true for most of the “Deluxe” titles (again, we shall not turn our thoughts toward a Deluxe edition of The Liars’ Club, lest those thoughts become impure …), and wow, even in that company, one of the newest Penguin […]
Read MoreBook Review: Keeping An Eye On Art
/Novelist Julian Barnes takes readers on a tour of some of his favorite French artists
Read MorePenguins on Parade: Thomas Ligotti!
/Some Penguin Classics quite inadvertently prompt somber thoughts. That’s been a bit of a theme in this particular Week O’ Penguins, and it continues with another of their latest volumes, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, by cult horror-writer and bolt-eyed loon Thomas Ligotti. This is true not only because Ligotti is cut from […]
Read MorePenguins on Parade: Perchance to Dream!
/Some Penguin Classics, as we seem to be mentioning quite a bit lately, are a bit odd. They call to mind fifty years of mottos the line has used to promote itself to the reading world, things like “The Best Books Ever Written.” They call these mottos to mind in aggressively evaluating terms, because when […]
Read MoreBook Review: Part of Our Lives
/A wonderful new book details the raucous past - and the complicated, vibrant present - of the public library in the United States
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Case Against Satan!
/Some Penguin Classics, as we’ve noticed, are intensely mystifying. Not in their subject matter, but rather in their very existence – and one of the latest examples is the lovely new Penguin edition of Ray Russell’s 1962 debut novel The Case Against Satan, with a new Introduction by horror novelist Laird Barron. After serving in […]
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Autobiography of Ben Franklin!
/Some Penguin Classics provide the best possible invitation right there with their covers, and I know almost no better example of this than the old 2003 edition of Benjamin Franklin’s The Autobiography and Other Writings, edited and introduced by the great American historian and biographer Kenneth Silverman (whose Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 biography of Cotton Mather […]
Read MoreBook Review: Evolution - The Whole Story
/A gorgeously-illustrated new book looks at the long and gaudy history of life on Earth
Read MoreThe Return of the TLS in the Penny Press!
/Ah, the joy of returning to the mighty TLS – or rather, in this instance, of it returning to me! There was a dark interval there where, as many of you will no doubt have noticed, the TLS vanished from local newsstands here in Boston – an annoying interruption in my enjoyment of the single […]
Read MoreBook Review: After Hitler
/A forensic and often quite moving new history of the last, desperate days of the Third Reich
Read MoreBook Review: The German War
/A new book brings to life the experiences of ordinary Germans during the Second World War
Read MoreThe Morgan Dennis Dog Book!
/Our book today is a little gem from 1946, something long-awaited by his many fans at the time: The Morgan Dennis Dog Book, a collection of the dog-illustrations of Boston’s own Morgan Dennis, a dapper and hilarious man who grew up on the narrow streets of Dorchester and became a very successful popular illustrator in […]
Read MoreComics: Good Old Lois & Clark!
/Last week’s comics haul from my beloved Comicopia here in Boston yielded quite a bit of good stuff (including the third issue of Captain America: White and the first issue of Sam Wilson: Captain America) and one item that was as confusing as it was heart-tugging for me: the first issue of what looks to […]
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