Post

ReadEasy, 2 March 2015

ReadEasy is a new feature for 2015 — because life’s hard enough already, amIright? https://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/570321074988175360 Last Wednesday Tom McCarthy joined Dennis Lim, director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, to discuss his new novel, Satin Island (Knopf, 2015), and to screen two avant-garde classics he considers to be in conversation with it: Antony Balch’s 1963 Towers […]

Read More

Post

Are you there, Antiquity? It’s me, A.E. Stallings

Olives by A.E. Stallings TriQuarterly Books, 2012; 80pp The poems in Olives are smart yet accessible; beautiful but deadly; both tragic and humorous. In her third collection, following Archaic Smile (1999) and Hapax (2006), poet A.E. Stallings playfully blends ancient and modern, Persephone and Barney (yes the cute purple dinosaur), with strangely profound results. The collection’s four parts bear the […]

Read More

Post

ReadEasy, 25 February 2015

A new feature for 2015, ReadEasy does the hard work so you don’t have to. https://twitter.com/Joannechocolat/status/569571870774837248 Also, totally read our reviews of Oscar-winning movies Boyhood, Whiplash, and Ida. Wanna see tomorrow’s prize-winners today? Buy tickets for No Return, our next Seriously Entertaining show at City Winery NYC, on March 9. Guests include horror maestro R.L. Stine (who we interviewed here), author and […]

Read More

Post

Stardust: The Rise and Fall of the Great American Songbook

The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song by Ben Yagoda Riverhead Books, 2015; 320pp “Loesser drew a picture of a train with a caboose and said, ‘This is what makes a good song. The locomotive has to start it. The caboose has to finish it off. […]

Read More

Post

The Fall of the House of Sigerius

Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda; translated by Jonathan Reeder Hogarth, 2015; 544pp Bonita Avenue is a social-realist comedy and a nightmare thriller. Author Peter Buwalda uses three characters, each tunnel-visioned in their own way, to tell a claustrophobic and totally compelling family saga. We discover very early on where it’s all headed; to read Bonita Avenue is like being locked […]

Read More

Post

ReadEasy, 16 February 2015

A new feature for 2015, ReadEasy is a weekly boat trip up the crazy river of the internet. How do YOU celebrate Friday the 13th? I always eat a live chihuahua. How about you? — R.L. Stine (@RL_Stine) February 13, 2015 …and if you enjoyed that: R.L. Stine joins our fabulous line-up for No Return on March 9 […]

Read More

Post

Runnin’ Wild: The House of SpeakEasy Inaugurates Year 2

Undeterred by the Snowpocalypse-that-in-any-case-wasn’t, crowds flocked to City Winery on January 28 to celebrate the House of SpeakEasy‘s first birthday and bless its second year of existence. It was a star-studded affair: Uma Thurman was there; Dan Stevens; the amazing staff of Barnes & Noble Union Square… and that was just in the audience. SpeakEasy […]

Read More