Martin Cruz Smith Dies at 82
Bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith has died from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, according to multiple outlets, including the Washington Post. He was best known for his 1981 novel Gorky Park. Smith had just recently published a new novel called Hotel Ukraine that was announced to be his last work. His protagonist Arkady Renko was characterized…
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Irvine Welsh Interviewed by BBC
A cool article and accompanying video where Irvine Welsh shows off the apartment shows off the apartment where he wrote Trainspotting. In addition to covering the changing times, the advance of artificial intelligence, and revisiting nineties bands, the article also covers Welsh’s new novel Men in Love.
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2025 National Book Festival Authors Announced
In prior years, even us bookish folk probably didn’t think too much about the Library of Congress. We got our little classification info on our publisher pages, but that was about it. This year, the institution has garnered more headlines. So I wonder if it will affect attendance of the National Book Festival, positively or…
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OC Punk Music Book Fun But Flawed
My review of Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County To The World by Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn was posted over at PopMatters.com today. Fun book and educational. It’s challenged by some clunky execution but I did add several new albums to my collection as a result of reading the…
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‘Unforgiving Places’ Provides a New Way to Think About Gun Violence
Rightly or wrongly, gun laws in America ain’t gonna change. Whether legislating different would be effective is a question that this country will not answer. So, Jens Ludwig provides a new way of thinking about violence involving firearms. In Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s…
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