In JULIET, NAKED, Nick Hornby has created a story about three lost individuals, and how they come to find themselves and each other. Annie and Duncan, a stagnant couple, have been together for 15 years. Annie loves Duncan — or at least thinks she does — but soon discovers she’s fallen out of love with him. Duncan loves Annie, but he cares about singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe more. I’m talking an obsessive, big-time man-crush.
Tucker, who’s compared to Bob Dylan, reached his peak in the 1980s, and promptly quit the business, walking away without a trace. It was hard for me to understand Tucker’s music since he’s a fictional character. It helped when I pictured a 50-year-old Kurt Cobain or Jeff Buckley, the only difference being that Tucker is still alive and kicking, albeit in self-imposed seclusion in Pennsylvania.
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Monte Schulz proves that his father was not the only talented storyteller in the family. For those who don’t know, Monte is the son of the late Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Now, Monte has carved out his own stake with THIS SIDE OF JORDAN, the first novel of a planned trilogy.
In spring 1929, Alvin Pendergrast is a 19-year-old who just spent the previous year in a hospital due to consumption. Very early on, Alvin realizes he is not fully over the disease and feels as though it’s going to come back. Not wanting to return to the hospital or even spend time on the family farm, he teams con man Chester Burke, who has no problems using a knife or guns with deadly consequences.
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I knew that reading those classic novels in high school and college would pay off someday. Because I was able to get most of the jokes in R. Sikoryak’s MASTERPIECE COMICS collection. Although it’s not the New York-based artist’s only gig, he’s made a name for himself marrying modern-day cartoon characters to the plots of literature’s most famous works, and the result is brilliant, brainy parody.
Having read several here and there over the years, I was pleased to see them all collected in a sturdy, handsome hardback from Drawn and Quarterly. One need not have a degree in English Lit to enjoy the contents, but those with no familiarity with the books being spoofed will be unable to grant it the deep appreciation it deserves.
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I’m not sure what I expected in reading THE ENTHUSIAST by Charlie Haas, but I expected more than I got. Haas’ novel has had heaps of praise, including a total rave in REASON magazine and other trusted sources, and its subject matter is something I hold near and dear: enthusiast or hobby magazines.
The protagonist, Henry Bay, is an associate editor who flits to and from small niche publications devoted to specialized pursuits like a fly on a window pane, from KITE BUGGY magazine to CROCHET LIFE to ICE CLIMBING and to tons of other publications that are supported by a small knot of avid readers. Haas definitely gets this culture and explains the appeal of it to Henry in a marvelous paragraph, of which this book is filled:
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From 1892, THE FATE OF FENELLA is an odd novel with something — but not much — for enthusiasts of Victorian sensation fiction; fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker; and readers interested in literary experiments.
Magazine publisher Joseph Snell Wood, who edited “a newspaper de luxe, indispensable to every Gentlewoman” called, well, THE GENTLEWOMAN, came up with a publicity gimmick that he thought would stimulate sales: He would sign 24 popular authors — 12 men and 12 women — to write a single novel, with each person writing one chapter. The writer who began the book would have no idea where the story and characters would end up.
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