// Category Archive for: Books

Talent Is An Asset: The Story Of Sparks

By Less Lee Moore

After all the articles I’ve written, after all the mix tapes and CDs I’ve made, after all the years of continual and ridiculous fangirling over Sparks. . . do I really need to convince you that they are one of the most wonderful bands of the last 40 years?

If only there were some sort of written chronology of their illustrious career, perhaps one that covers the band’s history, album by album, with salient or illuminating quotes from those who have known, followed, and worked with the band from its inception to the present day. . . it would just make things so much easier.

Thankfully, writer Daryl Easlea has answered my cries for help and written Talent Is An Asset: The Story Of Sparks.
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Armchair Casting Director: Water For Elephants

By Lisa Anderson

Over a year ago, I saw that a friend of mine was listening to a book called Water for Elephants on audiobook. I did not know at the time that it had been a commercial and critical success, or that author Sara Gruen had orginally written it as part of National Novel Writing Month. I did, however, have a fascination with elephants at the time, so I asked her to let me borrow it.
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More Than Shakespeare Slash: Q&A With Author Myrlin Hermes

By Jemiah Jefferson

The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet, the new novel by Portland, Oregon author Myrlin A. Hermes, dismantles some of the best-known works of literature in the English language—the plays and sonnets of good ol’ Willie Shakespeare, most particularly Hamlet—and builds from their parts a unique, steamy, bisexual love triangle between three famous characters.
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From Page To Screen: Shutter Island

By Maureen

When I saw the trailer for Shutter Island, I was instantly intrigued. My first celebrity crush, Leonardo DiCaprio, delving into my current career field, mental health? Seemed too good to be true.
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I Found All The Parts, By Laura Faeth

By Less Lee Moore

In I Found All The Parts: Healing The Soul Through Rock ‘n’ Roll, we learn a lot about author Laura Faeth as we follow her on an important journey.
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The Rebirth Of The Un-Dead: Q&A With Dacre Stoker

By Lisa Anderson

Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Dracula author Bram Stoker, has co-written an official sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead, along with screenwriter Ian Holt. I was fortunate enough to get to meet Dacre at a signing at Sherlock’s Books in Lebanon, TN this past December, and he graciously agreed to follow up with an interview by email.
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Irish Things We Love: Dracula, By Bram Stoker

Ask people to name some Irish things that they love, and they may come up with a list of things that are obviously Irish, like the band U2 or Guinness beer. I would argue though, that our cultural milieu, especially these days, is heavily inspired by the work of an Irish writer, specifically, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Both Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of Bram (and co-author of Dracula: the Un-Dead), and Dennis McIntyre, director of the Bram Stoker’s Dracula Organisation, advance this point of view.
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Things That Thrilled Me In 2009: By Allison Anders

Allison Anders is a filmmaker, director, music fan, and lover of life. She has written/directed Gas Food Lodging, Grace Of My Heart, Sugar Town, and Things Behind The Sun. She is also the founder of the Don’t Knock The Rock film and music festival. Currently, she is working on a follow up to her film Mi Vida Loca called Smile Now Cry Later.
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Top Ten Of 2009: By Shiny Around The Edges

Our Top Ten List of 2009 consists of things we’ve listened to, watched, and read throughout the year that have made an indelible impression. It is either hopelessly out-of-date or incredibly prescient depending on your personal politics. In no particular order:
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Not M-Miss M-M-Mitford: Brideshead Revisited, Revisited

By Hanna

When it came out in 1981, the Brideshead Revisited TV series starring Jeremy Irons was an event, and something remembered like a significant date in history by a lot of people who were alive then. Its greater cultural importance lay in the fact that it set the standard for all eccentric and twee undergraduate behavior, eventually becoming a staple for undergrad language students in the UK.

The TV series’ cult status arose from a situation that sounds like an urban legend, because it seems strange that people took it seriously at any point, and even stranger that they would try to copy a lifestyle that is presented as, at best, ambiguous in both the book and the series. But it’s true, and especially in the ’80s and ’90s, students took the TV series as a model for their lifestyles, co-opting with enthusiasm a philosophy of life that would most likely have excluded them from it on the basis of their origins, had it been real.
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