Just as he was in Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Arthur Less is apparently still a “bad gay.” But that doesn’t mean he’s not delightfully lost in this highly anticipated second volume of Greer’s “Less” series. This time, Arthur is haphazardly traveling across the...
“I bet everybody sets at least one world record without even knowing it,” claims Guy Delisle’s sister in the titular short. Sure, such records can’t be verified, but “thanks to the magic of comics, [Delisle’s] done the verifications” to showcase random record holders for never...
*STARRED REVIEW The prologue alone to Luke Healy's sharp, skilled The Con Artists is a wow-inducing example of show-don't-tell genius. "Oh, hello. I'm Luke Healy, the author of this book. No big deal," he modestly introduces himself. As he reads "a prepared statement" – the usual "entirely...
*STARRED REVIEW Rare is the audiobook that remains infectiously delightful through the ending credits, but Helen Ellis won’t disappoint with the 13 essays – her acknowledgements could almost qualify for a 14th, they’re that entertaining – of her second collection. Her beloved husband of 25 years...
That Jo Koy has created a sold-out, standing-ovation-earning stand-up career making people laugh while mining intimate family stories means no one else could possibly narrate his memoir. His hard-earned superstardom translates seamlessly into an audiobook, giving him a double-debut credit as author and narrator, presenting...
Kong Deok-geun is an “average administrative worker,” a position for which he surpassed 137 applicants for “a job that has no work.” His boredom, so severe that he’s named it “I-would-rather-eat-dog-treats-than-suffer-this-boredom,” sends him to the fourth floor, where he discovers Cabinet 13, then spends an...
Even before the title page, we've got a country road, an ambling rooster and a barreling semi – this can't end well ...
*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...
So this isn’t Shakespeare. No, wait ...
“Just because you have a testosterone prescription and a new sense of exhilaration doesn’t mean you have to go around setting down your life story,” Daniel Mallory Ortberg writes (and thankfully narrates), disguised as “Paul and Second Timothy: The Transmasculine Epistles.” His response to his...
Ivansk Street, Number 1933, in Kirovka, Ukraine, seems be an exact address, but the town council's clerk insists "that building does not exist." Constructed last year, "someone seemed to have forgotten to connect it to the district furnace," but plenty of people already live there....
*STARRED REVIEW When the material is already so funny, adding another layer of guffaw-inducements hardly seems possible, until you’ve heard Helen Ellis narrate her own 23-essay collection. Alabama-born-and-raised, Manhattan-domiciled for decades, Ellis is not wrong when she insists, “Southern accents are disarming.” Here, as in the teaser-podcast that debuted...
“I myself am astonished at what’s happening to me,” God – yes, that God – confesses. “I’m the same ...
Ilan Stavans and Roberto Weil, whose last collaboration, Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008), loosely contemporized Frank Capra’s similarly named, iconic film, use a comparable time-bending, pop-culturizing, humor-inducing graphic technique to adapt Cervantes’ 17th-century tome. Stavans compresses the original 125 chapters into just 30, remaining generally faithful to...
*STARRED REVIEW "There was nothing Moose loved more than hello," especially greetings from her human, Zara. But dogs aren't allowed at Zara's school and "There was nothing Moose disliked more than goodbye." Smart pup that she is, for every "goodbye," Moose finds a way to say...
Warning first: This is NOT NOT NOT for kids. For us old folks, however ...
Award-winning writer Sarah Weeks (Pie; So B. It) and India-born debut author Gita Varadarajan present a poignant, comical cultural exchange in the alternating voices of two fifth-grade boys. Joe Sylvester has been living in the same New Jersey town, going to the same school and hanging...
*STARRED REVIEW For Samira, learning about skeletons proves to be downright mortifying. Samira insists that neither she nor her best friend, Frida, could possibly have anything so terrible inside of them. But after their teacher confirms the awful truth, suddenly Samira can’t help but visualize being...
Going for a walk in “bear country” could be very dangerous business, unless you heed the wise advice of this intrepid child, whose well-stocked, oversize backpack contains all the many things necessary to negotiate potential sightings. When confronted by a black or brown bear, pepper spray...
