In Nancy Weber's riveting 1975 memoir-cum-cautionary tale The Life Swap, now back in print, she asks New York-based women if they want to swap lives. Her premise: You can borrow my name, wear my clothes, sleep with my husband, call my parents Mom and Dad. The result: can't-tear-yourself away tragedy.
Read MoreFor a long time, I thought poetry was for people who cultivated smug aloofness. Not anymore. For proof that poetry can serve as an offering of connectedness, check out Transylvanian-American poet Andrei Codrescu’s So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems 1968-2012 — or, if you live in New York or St. Paul, simply go outside with your eyes open.
Read MoreRobots are vying for our love. And don't say Belgian filmmaker Frank Theys' documentary Technocalyps and Scott Hutchins' novel A Working Theory of Love didn't warn you. You know that flutter of anticipation you feel every time you grope for your portable device? Yeah, well — let's just hope you haven't already uploaded your heart.
Read MoreThe Silent History is a cool experiment in fiction: a novel in the form of an app that releases installments, including geo-specific "Field Reports," every day. So two months in to its six-month launch, how does the book read? Where does it read best? And is it, you know, good? Here are a few of the places and times I've been in the company of The Silent History.
Read MoreConsidering Skyfall and the recent MoMA retrospective 50 Years of James Bond, I was pretty stoked to pick up Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth. It's ostensibly a spy novel, but the book's layered betrayal and intrigue originate less from espionage than the sticky reality of love.
Read MoreThe Morning News has decided to play Reading Roulette with six Russian authors, shooting a new one into the American blogosphere each month. Fourth up is Olga Slavnikova and her Slavic satire, "A Light Head."
Read MoreWith only a few episodes remaining on this season of Ru Paul’s All Star Drag Race, it’s time for all of the contestants to ramp up their game. In addition to a little extra sparkle (and a tight tuck), I think they could really gain from taking a peek at Alice Munro’s new collection of short stories,Dear Life, which hits bookstores this week.
Read More[In honor of the publication of Louise Glück’s Poems 1962–2012]
Fifty years of poems from a poet not yet turned seventy, brimming with carefully articulated emotion beginning in taut observations —
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs ....
Unlike the last collection of materials gleaned from Roberto Bolaño’s unpublished writings, Woes of the True Policeman does not come with an introduction by the late writer's literary executor (and Savage Detectives character) Ignacio Echevarría. Why?
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