Buzzed Books
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Buzzed Books #12: Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Gold Passage
Buzzed Books #12 by Nicole Callihan Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Gold Passage In the title poem of Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Gold Passage, she writes, “What illumines our path forward is what once consumed us,” and the book itself seems born from this exchange of consumption and enlightenment. Steeped in music and place, Dunkle’s poems orient me:… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #11: Superloop
Buzzed Books #11 by Stephen McClurg Nicole Callihan’s SuperLoop While re-reading Nicole Callihan’s SuperLoop, I noticed similarities to Charles Bukowski’s work, starting with form. In general, Callihan uses three forms: lists (including a recipe), sonnet variations, and thin, vertical columns that I’m not sure even have a technical name, but that I associate with Bukowski. The… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #10: Little Reef
Buzzed Books #10 by Jimmy Newborg Michael Carroll’s Little Reef “Imagine being this hungry and feeling sated, just like this, at the same time.”So closes “Barracuda,” the third story in Michael Caroll’s debut collection, Little Reef. This line carries with it its own sating effect, and is an appropriate statement for the book as a whole. Characters… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #9: Remember Me Like This
Buzzed Books #9 by Jordan Magill Brett Anthony Johnston’s Remember Me Like This Too often novels read as though authors imagine complex topics demand florid, even labyrinthine, sentences. Perhaps they see Proust’s magisterial–and mammoth!–examination of sense and memory, In Search of Lost Time, as their touchstone. Yet one mark of a gifted storyteller can also beto… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #8: Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music
Buzzed Books #8: Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music by Mark Pursell If Emma Donoghue has a byword, it’s “immersion.” The Irish-born author—who first gained international literary attention with her 2000 historical picaresque, Slammerkin—has a knack for building fictional worlds that envelop a reader with the mesmerizing quality of an enchantment. Sights, smells, textures, emotions; blood, dust, lust… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #7: Train Shots
Buzzed Books #7 by Mark Pursell Vanessa Blakeslee’s Train Shots In “Princess of Pop”, the eighth of eleven stories that comprise Vanessa Blakeslee’s debut collectionTrain Shots, Blakeslee gives a voice to one of our most exposed yet tight-lipped pop culture titans: Britney Spears. In a gutsy move that could have easily backfired or lent itself… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #5: Taking Setting off the Sidelines
Buzzed Books #5 by Alise Hamilton Taking Setting off the Sidelines Many authors, from James Joyce to Annie Proulx, have used place as a device for linking stories. Debut author Kristiana Kahakauwila follows in that tradition with six stories set across the islands of Hawai’i in her new collection, This is Paradise. This is Paradise… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #4: Why all Writers Should be Paying Attention to YA
Buzzed Books #4 by Alise Hamilton Why all Writers Should be Paying Attention to Young Adult Literature I first took note of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe during the ALA awards last winter, when it won the Pura Belpre Award, the Stonewall Book Award and was named as a Printz Honor Book.… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #3: Marisha Pessl’s New Literary Thriller
Buzzed Books #3 by Alise Hamilton The Art of Balance: Marisha Pessl’s New Literary Thriller Many of books make the claim of being at once a thriller and literary, but Marisha Pessl truly delivers on both fronts. Night Film is substantial, character driven, and full of delicious turns of phrase. It is also enormously suspenseful,… Continue reading
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