Books

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A store with character

Is our children reading?
Curious George shall rise again. As Publishers Weekly reported, the Harvard Square monkey-merchandise-cum-children's-bookstore, shuttered last summer, will return in late April under new ownership.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | February 15, 2012

Photos: LeVar Burton at Tufts University

February 3, 2012
LeVar Burton accepts the Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in Children's Media at Tufts University on February 3, 2012.
By JOSH BERLINGER | February 06, 2012

Twenty-nine-year-old Buddhist teacher Lodro Rinzler is the cool kid's Buddhist.

The sound of one hand clapping
In his new book, Rinzler spells out mindful compassion for the millennial set, making room for one-night stands and cocktails on the weekend.
By CASSANDRA LANDRY | February 08, 2012

Interview: Alice Bag of Stay at Home Bomb

Once a punk rocker, always a punk rocker
Alice Bag (nee Armendariz), who shone bright in the Los Angeles punk scene of the late-1970s, will be in town Saturday to read from her book Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage and to play a few tunes at 7 pm at Rochambeau Library.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 10, 2012

Sara Benincasa leaves her room

Pee shy
Sara Benincasa's "Agorafabulous! Dispatches from My Bedroom" is a memoir about her struggle with agoraphobia, and there's no pretty way around it.
By THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | January 31, 2012

Gender bias at NPR — and what it reveals about the world of literary fiction

All (Male) Things Considered
In August 2010, the literary corner of the Internet seized in crisis.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | January 25, 2012

Staring down Whitey Bulger

Mobsters
Jon Land's latest thriller begins in a South Boston basement where a man named John McIntyre has been handcuffed to a chair, slammed in the head with a chair leg, and strangled with a length of sailing rope.
By PHILIP EIL | January 11, 2012

Trying to find now

William Gibson's randomized experience
William Gibson — the writer who famously coined the term "cyberpunk" and whose classic tech-punk novels like Neuromancer and The Difference Engine helped spawn a couple generations' worth of bleak, busted fantasies — is now on tour promoting his first collection of nonfiction.
By MATT PARISH | January 04, 2012

Roger Williams gets his due

Founders
Roger Williams — the iconoclast who founded Rhode Island nearly 400 years ago with a radical call for religious tolerance — is held in high regard in these parts. But he is a little-known figure nationwide.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | January 04, 2012

Authors tote their wares to area bookstores

Road shows
A new story collection from Dan Chaon and new novels from Heidi Julavits and Adam Johnson are just some of the delights in store for Boston lit nerds.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 30, 2011

A Roger Williams professor tackles William F. Buckley Jr.

Thinkers
Conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr. was, perhaps, America's most important 20th-century public intellectual.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 21, 2011

The short, happy life of Occupy Boston's A-Z Library

Reading the revolution
On the final night in the brief and wondrous life of the Audre Lorde to Howard Zinn Library, it poured.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 14, 2011

Photos: Selections from Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed

Science Ink
Used with permission from Science Ink by Carl Zimmer, Sterling Publishing © 2011.
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 28, 2011

Picking the season’s best books — for everyone from plutocrats to paupers

Reading class
In recent months, Americans have become acutely aware of class divisions — thus it’s possible to choose books for your friends and family based on their income bracket. Below are picks for plutocrats and paupers alike.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 06, 2011

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Susan Orlean gets the dirt on Rin Tin Tin

Woof!
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean has been busy talking up her latest book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster), a biography of the most popular animal actor in history, and his impact on American culture.
By JOHN J. KELLY | November 30, 2011

Staying hardcore in the land of the stripmall

The way we were
Some of us enter this world prematurely. After peaking on parent-approved science fiction, you find yourself with a pocketful of quarters pedaling your PK Ripper toward the inviting glow of a neon ARCADE sign.
By MAX G. MORTON | December 01, 2011

The way we were

Staying hardcore in the land of the stripmall
How to explain Live . . . Suburbia?
By ANTHONY PAPPALARDO | December 01, 2011

Under new ownership, changes are coming to the New England Mobile Book Fair

Turn the Page
A few weeks ago, I dropped by the New England Mobile Book Fair to buy an Orhan Pamuk paperback, The Museum of Innocence , for my book club.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 01, 2011

Geoffrey Wolff and the ‘pee-wee metropolis’

English Dept.
Jeffrey Eugenides entered a select club last month when he published his novel, The Marriage Plot . His ticket for admission was a sentence on page 9 that began, "Providence was a corrupt town, crime ridden and mob-controlled . . . ."
By PHILIP EIL | December 01, 2011

Photos: Images from Live . . . Suburbia

Images from Live…Suburbia! by Anthony Pappalardo and Max G. Morton
The Live . . . Suburbia art show at Orchard Skate Shop's Extension Gallery opens December 10, 2011.
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 01, 2011

2nd Story’s inspiring Little Women

Timeless acts of kindness
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is so beloved a morsel of American literary optimism that it would be hard to do badly with an adaptation of the 1868 novel. And there have been numerous ones, from films to an opera and a musical.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 21, 2011

They, and Gideon Bok, are nothing but subjective

Time and perspective
Commonly artists prefer to work away from public scrutiny, shielded from revealing the awkward phases of creation, to emerge with a finished work of art that will last, if not for eternity, at least for quite a while.
By BRITTA KONAU | November 23, 2011

29 Cent Book Bin

Big Fat Whale
These books are cheap for a reason.
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | November 15, 2011

A first-time novelist at 87, UMass professor Joseph Zaitchik talks shop with his grandson, writer Alex Zaitchik

Writing in the family
Once a year, Joseph Zaitchik tells his favorite joke.
By ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK | November 16, 2011

A new book says 'smaller' cities could be the way of the future

Thinking small
This month sees the publication by MIT Press of Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World by Catherine Tumber.
By JON GARELICK | November 17, 2011

Photos: Boston Anarchist Book Fair 2011

Simmons College | November 11-13, 2011
Simmons College hosts the Boston Anarchist Book Fair on November 11-13, 2011.
By ALI CARTER | November 18, 2011

Interview: John Hodgman is pleased to serve

You're welcome
Brookline native, Apple pitchman, podcast host, and Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman has made a career out of hilarious pedantry.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | November 14, 2011

Black Sabbath are back — in print and on film

Masters of reality
The literature on Black Sabbath — already extensive — will continue to grow, as we try, try, try again to wrap our poor noggins around the irreducibly cosmic fact of this band.
By JAMES PARKER | November 14, 2011

Papercut Zine Library & the Lucy Parsons Center re-open

Radical reading
Zinesters perused hand-stitched books and photocopied pamphlets on topics ranging from punk politics and parenting to feminism and freeganism, while local musicians played folksy tunes on acoustic guitars, mandolins, and cello between floor-to-ceiling shelves of used books.
By LIZ PELLY | November 09, 2011