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Reviews

Reviews

by Rick Moody - Fiction

Reginald Edward Morse is one of the top reviewers on RateYourLodging.com, where his many reviews reveal more than just details of hotels around the globe --- they tell his life story. The puzzle of Reginald's life comes together through reviews that comment upon his motivational speaking career, the dissolution of his marriage, the separation from his beloved daughter, and his devotion to an amour known only as "K." But when Reginald disappears, we are left with the fragments of a life --- or at least the life he has carefully constructed --- that writer Rick Moody must make sense of.

by Jessica Abel - Graphic Novel, Nonfiction

Every week, millions of devoted fans tune in to or download "This American Life," "The Moth," "Radiolab," "Planet Money," "Snap Judgment," "Serial," "Invisibilia" and other narrative radio shows. Using personal stories to breathe life into complex ideas and issues, these beloved programs help us to understand ourselves and our world a little bit better. Each has a distinct style, but every one delivers stories that are brilliantly told and produced. OUT ON THE WIRE offers an unexpected window into this new kind of storytelling --- one that literally illustrates the making of a purely auditory medium.

by Ta-Nehisi Coates - Memoir, Nonfiction

Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men --- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.

by Zachary Leader - Biography, History, Nonfiction

THE LIFE OF SAUL BELLOW marks the centenary of Saul Bellow’s birth, as well as the 10th anniversary of his death. It draws on unprecedented access to Bellow’s papers, including much previously restricted material, as well as interviews with more than 150 of the novelist’s relatives, close friends, colleagues and lovers. Zachary Leader chronicles a singular life in letters, offering original and nuanced accounts not only of the novelist’s development and rise to eminence, but of his many identities --- as writer, polemicist, husband, father, Chicagoan, Jew, American.

by Roz Chast - Graphic Novel, Memoir, Nonfiction

In her first memoir, a 2014 National Book Award finalist, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT? is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

by Scott McCloud - Fiction, Graphic Novel

David Smith is giving his life for his art --- literally. Thanks to a deal with Death, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands. But now that he only has 200 days to live, deciding what to create is harder than he thought, and discovering the love of his life at the 11th hour isn't making it any easier! This is a story of desire taken to the edge of reason and beyond; of the frantic, clumsy dance steps of young love; and a gorgeous, street-level portrait of the world's greatest city.

written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell - Graphic Novel, History, Nonfiction

Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence --- but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before.

by Jules Feiffer - Fiction, Graphic Novel, Noir

Adding to a legendary career that includes a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, Obie Awards, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Cartoonist Society and the Writers Guild of America, Jules Feiffer now presents his first noir graphic novel. KILL MY MOTHER, a loving homage to the pulp-inspired films and comic strips of his youth, centers on five formidable women from two unrelated families, linked fatefully and fatally by a has-been, hard-drinking private detective.

by Jeff Smith - Comic Books, Graphic Novel, Science Fiction

When Rasl, a thief and ex-military engineer, discovers the lost journals of Nikola Tesla, he bridges the gap between modern physics and history's most notorious scientist. Soon Rasl finds himself in possession of humankind's greatest and most dangerous secret.

written and illustrated by Jeff Smith - Graphic Novel

After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures.