Terry Pratchett: Posthumous Sociologist Supreme
In sociological fashion, satirist/fantasy author Terry Pratchett used issues in his imagined world to show the illogic of the matters, customs, and norms in our lives.
Books
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about books including cultural commentary and history, non-fiction, literature, and more.
In ‘Girlfriend on Mars’ a RomCom Competes with Climate Change
Girlfriend on Mars equips itself nicely on the climate change front, but subsuming that narrative and the tensions within it into the love story redirects the novel’s orbit.
‘Tokens’ Pays Attention to the Moneyish Side of Things
Tokens is about all those things that are moneyish—monetary-like exchanges that are tracked and programmable, shady and social, hard coded and beyond borders.
Acid Trips Meet Ancestral Trauma in ‘All-Night Pharmacy’
With the same shocking specificity that sets apart her poetry, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy brings us uncomfortably close to everything the narrator witnesses in a hospital waiting room.
Margaret Atwood’s ‘Old Babes in the Wood’ Fears Nothing
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood brims with biting humor, precise detail, and incisive observations about life and aging.
Crime and Prejudice: NYPD’s Italian Squad
Past is prologue in NYPD history The Italian Squad: opposition to immigration; institutional racism; political surveillance and repression; police corruption and brutality.
10 Best Contemporary Books That Blend Music and Personal Narrative
Music and writing are both deeply personal but meant to be shared, as seen in these 10 best contemporary books that blend music and personal narrative.
Living Colour’s Time’s Up Isn’t Over
Rock-loving professor Kimberly Mack spends some time with Living Colour’s Time’s Up, giving the album and the band well-deserved attention and appreciation.
Chuck D Adds Talented Visual Artist to His Resume with ‘Stewdio’
Chuck D’s style in his three-volume, Covid-era graphic novel STEWdio can be described as neo-expressionistic with images and text often intertwined like Jean-Michael Basquiat’s art.
You Will Learn to Love the Beatles’ Movies
Steve Matteo’s meticulously researched and infectiously enthusiastic dive into the Beatles’ movies, Act Naturally, will make you love those silly films.
The Doors’ Well-Told Story Still Contains a Lot of History and Mystery
In the shadow of the “Happy Together” decade, Bob Batchelor’s the Doors’ biography Roadhouse Blues explores the dark and gloomy side of Jim Morrison and the band.
The Punk Rock Sci-Fi of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Hit Parade of Tears’
Though her fiction retains elements of future conjecture and civilizational prognosis, like punk rock itself, Izumi Suzuki is more committed to the sci-fi genre as an edgy social and emotional analysis tool.