Manga Review: Chibi Vampire: Airmail by Yuna Kagesaki

Having no prior exposure to the world of Yuna Kagesaki’s shojo comedy horror manga, Chibi Vampire, I initially wasn’t sure how beginner friendly Tokyopop’s new short story collection, Chibi Vampire: Airmail, would be. Turns out, though, that the package is slightly mislabeled: of the four short stories included in the book, only two directly connect to the Chibi series. The first two tales — both of which hinge on multiple personalities — have nary a vampire in ‘em. First item, ...

An Interview with Sara Paretsky, Author of Body Work

Sara Paretsky has an astonishing body of work and, yes, that is an intentional play on words on her latest novel titled Body Work, featuring her recurring, fascinating, protagonist V.I. Warshawski. This is the third of my three interviews with great female crime writers, the other two being Laura Lippman and Karin Slaughter. But Paretsky was writing mysteries long before Lippman and Slaughter got started and an argument could be made that she paved the way for them, having written ...

Book Review: Man Gave Names to All the Animals by Bob Dylan, illustrated by Jim Arnosky

 On August 20, 1979, Bob Dylan dropped Slow Train Coming on which there was a song, “Man Gave Names to All the Animals.” The song was not an allegory; it had no deep, hidden meaning. It simply told of man walking along, observing animals, and naming them. It’s not the only easy song that Dylan ever wrote, but with its island-like beat, it is infectious. This is a Bob Dylan song that can be shared with very young children, requiring ...

Book Review: Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

There are eight short stories, a novella, and two pieces masquerading as one-act plays in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 collection, Tales of the Jazz Age. Some of them are quite good; all of them are at worst interesting and narrated with style. None of them measures up to The Great Gatsby, but then how many works of fiction do? Two years earlier he had published with critical success his first novel, This Side of Paradise and a collection of short ...

An Interview with Laura Lippman, Author of I’d Know You Anywhere: A Novel

Laura Lippman is one of my five favorite crime writers and one of my two favorite female writers — the other being Lisa Lutz. More from blogcritics.org · Music Review: The Traveling Wilburys – Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 · Music Review: Fennesz/Daniell/Buck – Knoxville · Music Review: The Morlocks – The Morlocks Play Chess Lippman is consistently interesting and intriguing. She is always trying new things. A few years ago she decided to do a stand alone ...

Burn After Reading: Embracing the E-book

Another month; another sleek and seductive device arrives in shops. I cannot even get past Amazon’s home page without being smacked in the face by the breathtaking product shots of their “All-New Kindle”, which is modestly priced at £109 in the UK for the Wi-Fi version. OK, I may have exaggerated a tiny there, because the one in their picture does look like the dull, greyish and distinctly pedestrian cousin of Apple’s gleaming iPad. But who cares about the lack ...

Graphic Novel Review: Tank Girl: Skidmarks by Alan Martin and Rufus Dayglo

Collecting the girl’s most recent four-ish mini-series, Tank Girl: Skidmarks (Titan Books) is a rude and ruddy exercise in comic book mayhem that’s enjoyable even through a half-assed “preposterous” ending. I reviewed the first issue of this series as a floppy comic and was pretty much on board for all the cheerfully heartless ultra-violence then, but once writer Alan Martin and artist Rufus Dayglo more fully inserted a comic book version of the late, great Dee Dee Ramone into the ...

Book review: Here, on the Ground by Marianne Jones

If you are aware of the tension between what is and what could be, the contrast between the real and the ideal, the distance between earth and heaven, the poems in Here, on the Ground will resonate with you. This collection of 58 poems is award-winning poet Marianne Jones’ second (her first book Highway 17 was published in 1997). More from blogcritics.org · I Hear Sparks: Amina Figarova – Sketches · Music Review: Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles ...

Book Review: Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food by Jeff Potter

From initializing the kitchen, choosing your inputs (in the form of flavor and ingredients), and coping with variables, cooking is a lot like science. So, Cooking For Geeks, the cooking-techy manual with the pre-stained cover, can turn anyone into a good cook. More from blogcritics.org · Book Review: Widows Walk by Kenneth Weene · Book Review: This Day In Music by Neil Cossar · Book Review: Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food by Jeff ...

Book Review: On Whitman by C. K. Williams

“Set a poet to catch a poet” seems to be the principle Princeton University Press used to get prize winning poet C.K. Williams to write the critique of Walt Whitman for their “Writers on Writers” series. On Whitman the tiny — both in size and in content — book he came up with is as much an appreciation as it is an analytical critical study. Its aim is to show readers less familiar with the poet’s work (the ones who ...

Book Review: Ablutions by Patrick deWitt

Think of a novel like William Kennedy’s Ironweed; think of Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Iceman Cometh. Put them in a painting by an artist like George Grosz, and you have got a good idea about what Patrick deWitt’s debut novel Ablutions is like. Set most of the time in a Los Angeles bar peopled with a cast of drunks and lowlifes, it is narrated by an alcoholic barback whose own life is rapidly falling apart. These are not mild mannered ...

Book Review: Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America’s First Great Popular Songs, Edited by Ken Emerson

Lyrics relevant to today’s economic and social status quo that could have been written by Pete Seger, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, or Joan Baez. But they were not.  Stephen C. Foster wrote these classic lines in 1854 and Bruce Springsteen used them in his 2009 tour in encores.  Ken Emerson has put together an anthology including the lyrics to 32 of Foster’s almost 200 songs and complemented them with the lyrics to another 49 songs written by other composers that ...

Manga Review: Qwaser of Stigmata by Hiroyuki Yoshino and Kenetsu Sato

“Hello, do you love breasts?” Hiroyuki Yoshino, the author of Qwaser of Stigmata (Tokyopop), asks his readers in the afterward to Volume One of this “Mature” readers fantasy. “I love them very much!” More from blogcritics.org · Music Review: George Harrison – Thirty Three & 1/3 · Book Review: Twelve Stones: Notes On a Miraculous Journey by Barbara Carole · Book Review: Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler ...

Book Review: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

When the first character a narrator of a novel introduces to readers is named Perkus Tooth, it ought to be clear from the begin that the boat we are about to set sail in is not your typical ocean liner, the book not your run of the mill realistic novel. So if what you are looking for is a conventionally packaged narrative that holds the mirror up to nature, you would probably do well to stay away from Jonathan Lethem’s ...

Book Review: Jillian Dare by Melanie Jeschke

Melanie Jeschke is the author of the beloved “Oxford Chronicles,” a series that pays tribute to CS Lewis in a fictional plot. Similarly in Jillian Dare, Jeschke re-contextualizes Jane Eyre on a plantation in modern day Virginia. Jeschke specifies at the end of the book that she did not write this book to be a duplicate Jane Eyre — rather, she wished to capture the essence of the storyline, and I think she was successful. More from blogcritics.org ...

Book Review: Agents of Treachery, Edited by Otto Penzler

As he says in the introduction, editor Otto Penzler has collected “a veritable who’s who of today’s most highly regarded thrillers, as well as the most widely read” for Agents of Treachery, a collection of short stories in the spy/thriller genre. The contributors are Lee Child, Dan Fesperman, Joseph Finder, James Grady, Stephen Hunter, Andrew Klavan, John Lawton, Gayle Lynds, Charles McCarry, David Morrell, Stella Rimington, Olen Steinhauer, John Weisman, and Robert Wilson. Penzler asserts this is the first such ...

Magazine Review: Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 23

What an education Make: technology on your time is for those of us who can’t be trusted near power tools and soldering irons. While millions of people are familiar with resistors, 555 timer chips, and gearmotors, there are a whole lot of us who never even heard of potentiometers. However, by reading Make: technology on your time, the technologically impaired can at least say, “I think I’ve heard of that…”  More from blogcritics.org · Magazine Review: Make: Technology ...