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Entries tagged with 'Books'
Posted Jul. 25, 2008,
Peter Davis' Status Update: Get Schooled!
By Peter Davis
The dishiest, wittiest summer read is the controversial debut novel by my friend Anisha Lakhani, who was a teacher at Dalton and exposes all the decadent glamour and dirt on Manhattan private education in Schooled, which is out August 5th from Hyperion. Check out the supremely chic and smart Anisha read from her novel on August 12th at The Corner Bookstore at 1313 Madison Avenue, right near where all those rich young students live and play.
Posted May. 23, 2008,
PAPERMAG Recommends: Brooklyn Modern
By Alexis Swerdloff
There are more photos in this gallery. View them all.
A book that we can't stop leafing through is Diana Lind's recently published Brooklyn Modern: Architecture, Interiors and Design (Rizzoli). For those of you who compulsively look at Brooklyn craigslist listings just so you can peek into other people's apartments (OK, well maybe that's just us), this book is real estate porn at its most highbrow -- in that we didn't feel dirty inside after reading it. Lind set out to document Brooklyn's renaissance as seen through its blossoming modern architecture scene, so in addition to gorgeous photos by Yoko Inoue, this tome features insightful essays by Lind, Design Sponge's Grace Bonney, Brownstoner's Jonathan Butler and Architectural Record's Robert Ivy. Buy a copy here.
Posted May. 15, 2008,
Who's Reading What: Heloise from Heloise & the Savoir Faire
By Heloise Williams
Why Speak by Nathaniel Bellows
Nathaniel is an amazing writer and poet, as well as a dear friend and collaborator. His poems are incredibly well crafted. They are lean and quiet and a lot of them are pretty pastoral. He has a profound appreciation of the beauty and silvery lining surrounding the mundane. I am a big Elizabeth Bishop fan. So I may be reading Nathaniel's book with a parochial eye/ear but I definitely feel that they are kindred spirits.
Going for the Bronze by Sloane Tanen
My mom gave me this book for Christmas last year. Whenever I'm feeling a little down in the dumps, I'll pick it up. There are HILARIOUS photos of tiny fake chickens shopping, showering and ice-skating. These chicks do it all with style and humor. (Ha! Ha! Disgusting... )
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
I've always felt like a bit of an outsider myself (freak or weirdo), but obviously in no way like Calliope Stephanides, the protagonist in this book. Gender and/or sexual identity are topics that totally fascinate me (maybe everybody?). The book moves from the exotic to the everyday, from Greece to Detroit, from "woman" to man. I grew up in the midwest with foreign parents, so it was interesting for those reasons as well.
Heloise and The Savoir Faire’s new record Trash, Rats & Microphones was released last month on Simian Records.
Photo by MatthewBrindle.co.uk
Posted Apr. 29, 2008,
Books on PAPERMAG: The Lazarus Project and Balthrop, Alabama's Reading List
By Rebecca Carroll
FEATURED BOOK: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, May 2008)
So Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon is this crazy-rad brilliant writer whose work I first became acquainted with when I read his second collection of short stories, Nowhere Man, which, I must concede, contained passages that I had to read more than once. Hemon’s writing is dense but passionate-- there’s a sense of security in it, confident clarity, and yet it also feels as if words and meaning and sentences have been newly discovered, formed for the first time. His debut (and highly-anticipated) novel, The Lazarus Project, is about a young Chicago journalist (originally from Eastern Europe) in today’s world, who becomes fascinated by the death of an alleged anarchist in 1908 Eastern Europe.
For our first installment on our newly launched BOOKS on PAPERMAG, Hemon answered some questions for us via email.
Posted Dec. 10, 2007,
We're Having Best Books of 2007 Déja Vu All Over Again!
By Alexis Swerdloff
Both New York Magazine and the New York Times Book Review just revealed their respective best books of 2007 lists. It's no big whoop that there's some overlap going on (both publications included The Rest Is Noise, The Savage Detectives and Then We Came in the End), but it was a little jolting when we were greeted this morning with almost identical photos when we woke up and wanted to get our year-end book lists on!
Pictured above (from top to bottom), the New York Times list, the Neww York Magazine list
Posted Nov. 27, 2007,
Is That Blood on Your Skinny Jeans? Hipsters Kill And Are Killed in New Novel.
By Alexis Swerdloff
I just got a copy of Rayo Casablanca's new novel 6 Sick Hipsters, out in April, that follows a group of hipsters dubbed "Williamsburg's reigning elite." According the press release, "Collectively, they're the arbiters of taste for every vinyl-loving Gap-spurning, thrift store regular in town, but lately someone has been laying waste to Brooklyn's uber-hipsters, dispatching them in gruesome fashion." It continues... "Before the week is over, they'll be up to their skinny-jean waists in mayhem, manipulataion, contract killers, raw sewage, and murderous monkeys. Something is rotten in the state of Billyburg, and the last hipsters standing will discover just how rotten it really is." We did a quick skim-through, and spotted references to Barcade, a WWJJD (What Would Joan Jett Do?) T-shirt and a hat with the words "sick hipster" embroidered on it. I say, kill 'em all! Though not that cute monkey on the cover! Don't kill him!
Also, the Six Six Sick girls TOTALLY need to DJ the book party. Just a suggestion!
Posted Nov. 4, 2007,
Fabulous Book: Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King!
By Dennis Dermody
Just finished a fabulous book about director Otto Preminger written by Foster Hirsch: Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (Knopf).
Preminger is usually dismissed by critic and they usually point to Laura, his wonderful film noir starring Gene Tierney as his one good film. And while it’s hard to defend bloated misfires like Hurry Sundown, Skidoo and Rosebud, other films like Advise and Consent (one of the best films about politics ever), Anatomy of o Murder (a terrific courtroom drama), Bunny Lake Is Missing (a neglected enjoyably bizarre mystery) are just sensational. Preminger’s fearless fights against censorship (The Moon Is Blue, Man With the Golden Arm) were groundbreaking. But his wild temper and legendary fights with his actors dubbed him “Otto the Terrible” by the press and overshadowed his talent as a director.
Posted Oct. 31, 2007,
The Time Machine: What Books Would You Take?
By Ann Magnuson
This blog in the New York Times about the literacy campaign in Chile (part of which involves giving away a box of nine books to every family) reminded me of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. I recently caught the end of the fabulous 1960 movie (starring hunky Aussie Rod Taylor) on TV. I loved the movie but was always annoyed that the Morlocks looked so cheesy. Certainly with today's technology they could build a better Morlock? So I rented the 2002 remake to see. Still kinda cheesy, but Jeremy Irons was truly frightening as the inexplicably more-evolved Morlock leader. Check out this scene where Irons does battle with Guy Pearce -- another hot Aussie... although I prefer Rod. (I always prefer my movie star hunks to be named "Rod.") Irons looks like a cross between Edgar Winter, David Bowie as Andy Warhol and Bryan Gregory from The Cramps. Good Halloween drag!
Posted Aug. 14, 2007,
Pattie Boyd, Ex-Wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton Pens Autobiography
By Carol Lee
I stumbled upon some fun, gorgeous and utterly cute of photos of Pattie Boyd today. She has recently penned a tell-all autobiography titled Wonderful Today, which will be released later this summer. No doubt the book will be a page-turner (fingers crossed!). After all, as an ex-wife of a Beatle, George Harrison, whom I love-love-love and Eric Clapton (who wrote wrenching classics like "Layla" and "You Look Wonderful Tonight" about her after stealing the girl from his best friend George), Pattie Boyd has seen a thing or two in her day. Boyd was truly a queen of the Sixties. Aside from her famous marriages, she also modeled and worked as a photographer... sort of like Linda Eastman, though I don't think Linda ever worked as a model. Anyway, so here's a little photo tribute to the original rock 'n' roll babe -- from frolicking with Harrison in the Bahamas in the '60s and traipsing around London with Clapton in the '70s and the '80s to gallery hopping solo in recent months. She's 63 years old now and looks pretty damn good. Can't wait to read her book! By the way, how cute is George Harrison rocking a mod beach get-up complete with fuzzy red cap?!
Posted Jul. 23, 2007,
Heather Hunter: Becky & the Pussycats
By Rebecca Carroll
Taboo-breaking, boundary-busting, free-spirited former porn star turned artist, musician and author Heather Hunter tells us a thing or two about Ron Jeremy, gay porn and her Cosby-esque childhood. Her debut novel, Insatiable: The Rise of a Porn Star (St. Martin’s) is out this month.
Rebecca Carroll: Why a novel?
Heather Hunter: Everyone asks me that question! Well, I’ve been a private person throughout my whole career, and this [novel] is my life. That’s why it took me 10 years to actually finish the book -- because I’m still living it. I was battling over whether or not I should write it as an autobiography, and then decided I didn’t want to because I’m not a kiss-and-tell person. I respect peoples’ privacy -- especially when it involves me!
RC: What did it feel like to write your life as fiction?
HH: It was really cleansing because I realized I could still tell my story through fiction -- I could just let my imagination go. There were points where it felt like going through therapy for free.
Posted Jul. 16, 2007,
Harry Potter Mania!
By Shanon Kelley
At the risk of alerting the general public to my super-nerd status, I'd like to admit that I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix twice this weekend. That's right, twice. It was that good. And aside from the hot factor of Gary Oldman as Harry's godfather, Sirius Black (see photo), the movie has succeeded in making my skin tingle with anticipation of the final book coming out July 21st. I'm even tempted to go to the Union Square Barnes & Noble Harry Potter midnight party, despite the maddening prospect of 5,000 expected attendees.
What will happen to Harry in the final installment? After the jump I've included a list of true spoilers from JKR herself (courtesy of The Leaky Cauldron). But more importantly, what will happen to me and the millions worldwide when this beloved series is finally over?
Posted Jun. 13, 2007,
Slim Aarons' Vintage Hollywood
By Ann Magnuson
Our pal David A. Keeps featured this fab Slim Aarons photo of Joan Collins in a recent edition of "The Scout," Keeps' design-oriented column for the L.A. Times. I've always loved this photo. It seems to say everything about the Hollywood Dream Factory (at least the sugary icing slathered onto the arsenic-laced cake of what is actually Hollywood Reality!) Miss Collins and her poodle seem to be inviting us to Think Pink! (I'm sure Warren Beatty was when he saw this photo -- which was probably taken around the time Beatty and Collins were 'an item'). I love Aaron's photography -- so dreamy, so creamy, so CHIC!
Posted Jun. 6, 2007,
Miranda July Talks to PAPER TV
By Alexis Swerdloff
PAPER TV's Natalia C. Leite sits down with Renaissance Woman Miranda July, who just released a new book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You.
Posted May. 30, 2007,
Gory, Great Horror Book: Offspring!
By Dennis Dermody
I happen to love splatterpunk author Jack Ketchum, who like my other fave -- the late Richard Laymon -- writes horror fiction that actually goes too far. Ketchum's books like Lost, Red and The Girl Next Door are relentlessly shocking both in subject matter and delivery.
But my all time favorite has always been Off Season (1981) about a cannibalistic tribe that lives in caves off the coast of Maine that attack vacationing tourists one fateful night. It was genuinely shocking. He did a sequel called Offspring, but it's been out of print forever and I kept getting outbid on it on eBay. But it's been re-issued by Leisure Books (www.dorchesterpub.com) in paperback and I read it over the weekend and it's a chilling page-turner where some of the original tribe of killers have been moving up and down the coast of Maine killing and stealing children to propagate their family. This one is really brutal too, and almost unimaginably violent. God, was it good!
Posted May. 16, 2007,
Fifteen Warholian Minutes with Christopher Makos
By PAPERMAG Editors
Text and photos by Phil Smrek
Multiple films (I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Factory Girl), a myriad of books and countless magazine articles have all tried to capture the essence of “Warholia.” Few, save for The Andy Warhol Diaries, actually have. That is, until photographer Christopher Makos placed Andy Warhol in the context of his own life with his latest book, Warhol/Makos in Context (PowerHouse Books), and an exhibit “Warhol: Vintage Portraits” at Yancey Richardson Gallery through June 29.
With In Context, Makos presents, in chronological order, an unexpurgated visual review of his days as Andy’s collaborator, sidekick and close friend. Via never before seen contact sheets reproduced in full, and prints from parties, events, projects, behind the scenes hoopla and trips the two made together, one is afforded a rare look into the circumstances surrounding the images from the final decade (1977-1987) of Warhol’s life.
“Vintage Portraits” is an exhibit of the Warhol-in-drag series Christopher and Andy teamed up on over a two-day period in 1981. They used May Ray (with whom Makos earlier apprenticed)'s portrayal of Marcel Duchamp as Rose Selavy (wearing a woman’s hat and dress) as a starting point and explored their own ambiguous sexualities with the help of eight different wigs and two different make-up applications, juxtaposed with the shirt, tie and jeans Warhol was already wearing. The result was 349 images of Warhol’s “Altered Image,” a highlighted selection of which are on view at the Yancey Richardson Gallery.
Posted May. 10, 2007,
Your E-mail Sux!!!! JK, LOL ;) XOXO
By Carol Lee
Recently, both the New Yorker (in The Talk of the Town section) and The New York Times ran stories on a new book on e-mail etiquette called "Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home." "S" stands for simple, "E" for effective, "N" for necessary, "D" for done. The high-profile visibility of this little-book-that-could is no wonder since it was co-authored by David Shipley who is deputy editorial page editor of The Times and Will Schwalbe, editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books. They were eating oysters in Grand Central Terminal and complaining about ill-considered e-mails they had recently received, and even sent, when a light bulb went off.
I'm not sure if I'll ever read this book, but I love the concept because I've always been a big fan of etiquette books (Amy Vanderbilt is the queen on this subject!) since I was a kid. Other people's idiosyncrasies are, to me, always an interesting read, and it's just the sort of thing that makes you chuckle and go "Oh, I know people like that." or "Oh, yeah, I do that."
Check out some of the e-mail "Do's and Don'ts" according to Schwalbe (an "All best!" man) and Shipley ( a "Cheers" chap):
1. Do think before you send.
2. Do send e-mail you would like to receive.
3. Don't use a misleading or meaningless subject ("Re: Re: Re:") -- you'll end up addressing the e-mail to the wrong recipients, or too many of them.
4. Don't put somebody in the "To" list who should be a "Cc" or vice versa
5. Don't misuse the sneaky "Bcc" and "Forward" commands, which can easily cause a confidential message to become very public indeed.
Posted Apr. 2, 2007,
Cormac McCarthy, Man of the Hour
By Alexis Swerdloff
A lot of Cormac-McCarthy-related news in the air. Just found out that screenwriter Joe Penhall has been tapped to adapt The Road, McCarthy's highly-touted, bleak post-apocalyptic novel, for the big screen. And last week it was announced that the super-reclusive author will be making his first television appearance ever on Oprah. Go, Cormac, go!
Here's what our friends over at GADNY have to say:
Posted Mar. 15, 2007,
Q&A with "Mississippi Sissy" Kevin Sessums
By PAPERMAG Editors
By Phil Smrek
In Mississippi Sissy, celebrity profiler (Interview, Vanity Fair, Allure) Kevin Sessums spins the bottle in his own direction and both poignantly and humorously recounts 19 years growing up gay gay gay in the prejudiced and segregationist Mississippi of the ‘60s.
Orphaned at 8, along with younger brother Kim and sister Karole, Sessums was left behind by a mother who had compassion, if not encouragement, for his fey ways and an uber macho semi-professional athlete of a father whose profound disappointment in his ‘sissy’ son left an indelible scar on Sessums’ psyche. At 16 he was introduced to Jackson, Mississippi’s doyennes of the arts by friend and homosexual mentor, newspaper arts editor, Frank Haines, who was 30 years his senior. Sessums would later discover Haines’s bound and bludgeoned body and testify at the sensational trial. It was in this cultural enclave that Sessums befriended novelist Eudora Welty. Before leaving the south to attend Juilliard, Kevin Sussems lived a life of hiding secrets, being decidedly different and drawing strength from what others perceived as weakness.
I first met Kevin 20 years ago while working as an ad assistant at Andy Warhol’s Interview. He had just stepped into the role of senior editor and was beginning his distinguished career of celebrity limo-chasing and hobnobbing. I recently caught up with my ‘ol co-worker as he walked his dog along 21st Street and asked a few questions about the book I always knew he’d write.
Posted Mar. 13, 2007,
Farley Granger Book Party
By Dennis Dermody
I went to the book party for Farley Granger's autobigraphy Include Me Out last night at Jezebel's restaurant on 45th and Ninth Ave. I went with Julianne Moore who the night before finished her Broadway run with the David Hare play The Vertical Hour and is next doing the new film by Fernando Meirelles (who did The Constant Gardener and City Of God) called Blindness co-starring with hottie Daniel Craig. It's always a bit of a thrill to shake hands with Farley Granger -- my head floods with memories of him brooding and handsome in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope or on the run from the law with lovely Cathy O'Donnell in They Live By Night or the dashing soldier in Luchino Visonti's exquisite Senso.
My friend suggested I "steal his lighter," a reference to Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train. Farley was there with his partner and co-writer Robert Calhoun, one of the sweetest man I've ever met -- back in the day he used to produce As The World Turns which Juilanne Moore and Farley both appeared on (not to mention Parkey Posey, Steven Weber, Jason Biggs, etc.- many of them cast by Vince Liebhart, who was also in attendance last night). Check out the book (from St. Martin's Press, and also The Film Forum (on April 23rd) which hosts a special night with Farley Granger, a true legend.
Posted Mar. 12, 2007,
Iggy Pop Lives
By David Hershkovits
Who doesn't love Iggy Pop today? But it wasn't always so. Did you know that Iggy has been beaten up by his fans? Here's a morsel from Nick Kent's London Times eye-opening essay of a new Iggy biography and The Stooges first studio album in 34 years.
"It began in 1967 with the group getting roundly booed off stage and ended seven years later with the singer being stabbed and beaten unconscious on stage at a club in Los Angeles, then tied up in a gunny sack and left to rot in a gutter."
These and other salacious details about the notorious rocker are revealed in Paul Trynka's fairly definitive Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed. Expect to be hearing alot about Iggy this year. He's touring with his new (not favorably reviewed here) record, a Hollywood bio-pic called The Passenger is in production, with Elijah Wood playing Iggy and a DVD documentary -- Once a Stooge, Always a Stooge -- should be available shortly.