Books
Offerings to the Visual World
Michigan photographer Don Hudson has been taking pictures for decades, but only recently decided to digitize his body of work and share it on the web. A new book of his photos called 'From the Archives' was just released and it's pretty awesome.
All the Books I Read in 2012
I hate end-of-the-year best-of lists. They are short-sighted and usually hive-mindish. They feel counter-productive or something, like they are trying to trick you. Instead, here’s a list of everything I read this year, 135 books, in order.
Coffee, Coca, and Government Favors
If you hate the War on Drugs, Ricardo Cortés should be one of your favorite illustrators. I talked to him about his book, 'A Secret History of Coffee, Coca, & Cola,' which documents the cozy relationship that Coca-Cola had with the US government's drug...
Verbal Paintings of Cartoon Dogs Sexting
Patricia Lockwood has a brain seemingly designed to blow up Twitter. Her feed is full of cartoon tween j/o bait and hyper-fantasy sexy stuff like “I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me." Now...
Solo Piano Music
Before reading the official report, the investigator announced his intention to use every tool at his disposal to protect Fateh. He kicked out everyone who had gathered—the journalists, political activists, civil-society organizations, and curious...
Considering Roberto Bolaño and 'Woes of the True Policeman'
I absolutely hated Roberto Bolaño the first time I read him. I’d heard the endless hype surrounding the release of translation after translation, a kind of post-death onslaught in the manner of some literary Tupac who kept pumping books out after...
Visiting the Art Exhibits in Torbjørn Rødland's Dreams
Torbjørn Rødland is a weird dude. I mean that in the best way possible, as his weirdness manifests itself in brilliant and subversive photographs that twist our perceptions of visual culture into a ball and throw them in the trash.
Messed Up Books to Read While Wearing a Mask
It’s that time of year again when they start putting Halloween movies on TV and I start wondering when it became so hard to write compelling horror. A lot of what comes out now seems too concerned with how easy it would be for someone to utilize CGI on...
I Asked My Dad, Who Has Dementia, to Annotate Jonathan Franzen’s ‘How to Be Alone’
When my father lost his memory to dementia, everything in the house around him became new. He often can’t remember how sitting in a chair traditionally works, but turning the chair upside down makes total sense. The rugs aren’t floor coverings any more...
The Cat Offers Itself
While William S. Burroughs is increasingly regarded as one of the most important writers of the 20th century, but his artistic genius is often overshadowed by tales of his outlaw lifestyle. Of all the wild stories in Burroughs’s life, the best (and...
The Novelizer
Sadly, the market for novelizations has begun to dry up. So I called Alan Dean Foster, author of novelizations for many films like 'Alien' and 'Star Wars,' to find out how the science-fiction fans of tomorrow will satisfy their appetite for transmedia...
Throwing Fifty Shades of Shade at Soho House
There's a panic that comes when you realize that, of your own free will, you've committed to attending a release party-slash-live author Q&A for a 'Fifty Shades of Grey'-themed classical CD.