Best Books of 2018, Largely Outdated
The best books of last year, pretty much from any year.… Read More Best Books of 2018, Largely Outdated
Author: Michael J. Shymanski
Born and raised San Franciscan.
The Enduring Friday Night Lights
It’s been thirty years since the Permian Panthers failed to clinch the Texas state championship game and their story still ripples through pop culture. There is the book, a movie, and a five-season TV series that followed shortly after. A fair amount of people only know the latter, unaware of the movie, not to mention… Read More The Enduring Friday Night Lights
A Life in Hand: Tranströmer’s Brief, Resounding Memoir
The size of Tomas Tranströmer’s poetic memoir is initially striking: a book the size of a hand distinguished itself amongst the others at the local bookstore. Then a sticker: “2011 Nobel Prize Winner.” Sold. One could read a Nobel Laureate’s autobiographical montage without spilling out hours necessary for other classics. Maybe in a day. The… Read More A Life in Hand: Tranströmer’s Brief, Resounding Memoir
Fat City: Not Your California
While easily associated with the affluence of Silicon Valley and the glitzy nature of Hollywood, California is a state best read at street-level, the real and the mundane, about those who are trying to make it so desperately. The New York Review of Book’s reissue of Fat City, Leonard Gardner’s one hit wonder of a… Read More Fat City: Not Your California
The Power of Our Wants: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Vikings repillaging a town. Child molestation at a traveling fair. A fraternal feud at its culmination. Wells Tower’s eccentric collection of nine stories comprises what it means to be human and flawed in our relationships, romantic or not. Laced with crisp aphorisms and provocative analogies, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2009) cements Tower as a master… Read More The Power of Our Wants: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Pulphead: Essays from the B-Side
“Do you know I and I?” –Bunny Wailer A good essayist has a knack for honesty, but John Jeremiah Sullivan, American magazine writer, concentrates honesty in its purest form, mixed with a little entropy and dashed with brilliant confessional writing. To say that the good essayist is daring, would not be doing Sullivan’s brazenness justice.… Read More Pulphead: Essays from the B-Side
The Best Books of 2017, A Very Biased List
This is a list of books, curated, read, and reviewed at the biased discretion of a man who cannot be still.… Read More The Best Books of 2017, A Very Biased List
