Book Reviews Category
My review of Damascus by Joshua Mohr is live at The Nervous Breakdown
Posted on February 14, 2012 Leave a Comment
If you’re a fan of Charles Bukowski (and who isn’t) then you’ll probably like this seedy, depressing and ultimately touching and redeeming novel, Damascus (Two Dollar Radio), by Joshua Mohr. I had the pleasure of reading with Josh a few months ago in Chicago as part of The Nervous Breakdown reading series run by Gina […]
My review of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s NowTrends is live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on February 1, 2012 Leave a Comment
My review of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s NowTrends is now up at The Nervous Breakdown. Great stuff. He’s known as a non-fiction author, but he writes fiction too, very well published—The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, BASS, O. Henry, etc. And KTG is one hell of a nice guy, too. I ran across his work in […]
My review of Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl is now live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on November 23, 2011 Leave a Comment
Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl (Emergency Press) is a wild ride though London. Her protagonist, Ruth, is detached and a bit of a sadist, and yet, at the same time, lost, vulnerable and endearing. Head over to The Nervous Breakdown for the full review. Loved it.
My book review of 11/22/63 by Stephen King is now live at Lit Reactor
Posted on November 19, 2011 Leave a Comment
My review of 11/22/63 is now live at LitReactor and I think it’s Stephen King’s best book in awhile. You don’t have to be a fan of JFK and/or conspiracy theories in order to dig this book. And the time travel aspects are certainly a part of this story, but really, it’s the way that […]
My review of Shannon Cain’s The Necessity of Certain Behaviors is live at The Nervous Breakdown
Posted on November 17, 2011 Leave a Comment
My review of Shannon Cain’s collection of dark, sexy, humorous stories is live up at The Nervous Breakdown. This book was the winner of the 2011 Drue Heinz prize, which yielded us the fantastic The Physics of Imaginary Objects by Tina May Hall last year. Shannon really put together a compelling book, one that should […]
My review of Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill is now live up at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on September 16, 2011 Leave a Comment
Maybe you’ve never heard of Frank Bill. Well, open them damn ears, son. I just went to the release party for Crimes in Southern Indiana down in Corydon, Indiana. Yes, I dragged Chris Deal, Livius Nedin and Robb Olson with me. Yes, there was a fifty foot sign that said HELL IS REAL about halfway […]
My review of Short Bus by Brian Allen Carr is live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on September 6, 2011 Leave a Comment
My review of the short story collection, Short Bus by Brian Allen Carr is now live at The Nervous Breakdown. This is a wild bunch of stories set along the Texas and Mexico border. Carr takes the essence of wanderlust mixes it with the desert heat and tosses in a bit of failure with just […]
My review of The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock is live at The Nervous Breakdown
Posted on August 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
The first time I met Donald Ray Pollock was at a reading he did opening up for Chuck Palahniuk in St. Louis. It was a wild night, and I dragged my younger brother Bill out with me—he’d never seen Palahniuk read before. The event was packed, and the audience couldn’t have been more hip, more […]
My review of Kio Stark’s Follow Me Down is now live at The Nervous Breakdown
Posted on August 3, 2011 Leave a Comment
My review of Kio Stark’s disorienting and lush novella Follow Me Down is now live at The Nervous Breakdown. I really enjoyed her voice, the heavy setting, the cast of characters that are paraded across the page, haunting the dirty sidewalks of NYC. I fell into this story right away, and man did I follow […]
My review of Cape Cod Noir (Akashic Books) is now live at The Cult
Posted on July 27, 2011 Leave a Comment
I know, the first thought out of your head must be, Cape Cod? What the hell does Cape Cod have to do with noir? Well, quite a lot it turns out. When you have an elite upper class that is butting up against a beaten down working class, long time residents dealing with obnoxious tourists […]
- Richard Thomas - 