Book Reviews
V.29 No.34 | 8/20/2020
Courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Review
Joni Murphy’s Talking Animals
An Orwellian satire about the revolution that’s already here
Talking Animals
Joni Murphy’s novel Talking Animals is a modern-day political satire that cuts almost too close to the bone, with echoes of Orwell’s Animal Farm that reverberate throughout the subways and endless numbered streets of her not-so-fictional New York City.
V.29 No.28 | 7/9/2020
courtesy of Gina Rae La Cerva
Book Review
Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food
NM-born writer Gina Rae La Cerva writes about our obsession with—and destruction of—wild foods
Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food
It is slightly ironic, given the state of our wildlands, that we are seeing a recent cultural fascination with foraging and wild foods. One of the things Gina Rae La Cerva touches on often in her new book, Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food, is why the trend has entrenched itself in the cultural subconscious now, when true wilderness is all but nonexistent.
V.28 No.42 | 10/17/2019
courtesy of the artist
Book Review
A Tale of Two Rivers
Renny Golden’s The Music of Her Rivers
The Music of Her Rivers
The Music of Her Rivers is a two-part book of poetry about the history of two rivers: the Rio Grande and the Chicago River.
V.27 No.24 | 6/14/2018
courtesy Of Little, Brown And Company
Book Review
It's Complicated
David Sedaris' latest, Calypso, is both great and maddening
Calypso
When he's at his best in Calypso, David Sedaris is—without too many jokes—revealing parts of himself that are hard to look at.
V.27 No.23 | 6/7/2018
Book Review
Finding Success on The New Farm
A memoir of a (profitable) organic farm
The New Farm: Our Ten Years at the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution
In The New Farm, Brent Preston gives his account of moving out to the country to start a farm, doing it successfully and creating a model that could help countless other small farmers build their business.
V.27 No.15 | 4/12/2018
Book Review
Beyond Ink and Whiskey
Leslie Jamison's newest work is full of feeling and analysis that leads the way to truth
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath
The heart of Leslie Jamison's The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath is the grip of alcohol, its reputation as the literary choice of romantic self-destruction. It's not so much the substance itself so much as “the surplus of mystical properties” that people assign to it.
V.27 No.10 | 3/8/2018
Book Review
Magic in the Medium
Luis Urrea's novel works moving literary feats
The House of Broken Angels
The House of Broken Angels is a tremendous work—full of joy, yes, but regret, too—capable of humor typed right on to the page with phrases that will provoke tears.
V.27 No.6 | 2/8/2018
Book Review
New York Moments
Neon in Daylight finds a story for the directionless
Neon in Daylight
Neon in Daylight is a New York story, and ever-lurking, edgy side of the city inserts itself into the story as though it were a character as vital as any human one.
V.26 No.46 | 11/16/2017
Book Review
From Ink Black to Paper White
Graphic novel Ink in Water doesn't shy away from the hard stuff
Lacy J. Davis gives structure to her life in meaningful ways in her new graphic novel Ink in Water.
V.26 No.43 | 10/26/2017
courtesy of the artist
Book Review
Into the Unknown
Investigate the paranormal through the pages of Riley Mitchell's book
The Essential Paranormal Bucket List
The Essential Paranormal Bucket List rounds up paranormal wonders from the world over.
V.26 No.37 | 9/14/2017
Book Review
Getting to Know Samantha Irby
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life inspires the desire to ... meet in real life
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Samantha Irby's varied collection of essays makes the topics truly felt, accessible to all and approached with unflinching realness.
V.26 No.32 | 8/10/2017
Cannabis Manual
A Greener Future
Smoke Signals points the way by looking at the past
Smoke Signals details history through the lens of everyone's favorite plant.
V.26 No.31 | 8/3/2017
Book Review
New Mexico After Dark
The high desert underworld of Buckskin Cocaine
Buckskin Cocaine
There is a particular emotional distance with which each character is held, until the moment when zooming in close and revealing vulnerability will be most wrenching.
V.26 No.23 | 6/8/2017
Book Review
Memory Rendered into Poetry
Jacqueline Woodson's visit and her novel, Another Brooklyn
In Another Brooklyn, two-parts poetry and one-part prose, it's not just the story that resonates, but the knack that Jacqueline Woodson has for infusing the world she creates with the contemplativeness that comes with her earnest poetry.
V.26 No.19 | 5/11/2017
Book Review
All Roads Lead to Florida
Sarah Gerard's dark evocations of the sunshine state
Sarah Gerard's book of essays, Sunshine State, is an ode to the many faces of her home state, with a the dizzying toggle between internal landscapes and external forces, shifting between the poetic and the starkly unsentimental.
