amber noelle sparks

Entries categorized as ‘Books’

I love you, Elif Batuman.

March 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Look what you’ve done now: you’ve gone and added three more books to my already overflowing, overstuffed reading list. And yet because I loved The Possessed: Adventures etc. and because I share your passion for Russian literature and because yes, I have read (most) Tolstoy and because I’ve already read Soul and loved it, I will add these books to my list and do it gladly. You’re the best.

P.S. I didn’t want to be–I resisted–after all, Megan McCain?–but I have, despite myself, grown to respect the Daily Beast very much. Damn it.

Categories: Books · cool stuff · smart people

Felix Salmon Reviews The Big Short

March 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Here at the B&N Review. A new angle on the story before the story of the financial crisis:

The Big Short is not the story of the crisis, as the crisis is commonly understood. The failure of Lehman brothers and of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the stock-market crash; the bail-out of Detroit; the fevered all-nighters pulled at Treasury and the New York Fed; the fears that the entire global financial system was on the brink of collapse — little if any of that is in this book.

Instead, Lewis has found a different story — one which he started mining for a spectacular cover story in the December 2007 issue of Portfolio magazine, and which has culminated in this book, over two years later. It’s the story of what used to be called the “subprime crisis” before it metastasized into something much larger and more dangerous than that. And it’s also, like all Michael Lewis tales, a human story, which takes us deep inside unique characters like Steve Eisman and Mike Burry.

Michael Lewis is good. And this book is bound to very good. And quite eye-opening–as if we haven’t had our lids stretched far enough in the past two years already.

H/t Balloon Juice.

Categories: Books · rabid consumerism · smart people

Where Wealth Accumulates, and Men Decay

March 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I love Tony Judt. This man is an absolutely brilliant brilliant brilliant historian with an unabashed lefty bent. (Have you read Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945? No? Please do, soon.) He also happens to be slowly dying of A.L.S. He’s written about that, too, movingly, winningly, wonderfully.

So I knew I wanted to read his new book, Ill Fares the Land, regardless of subject matter. As soon as I heard the title, borrowed from Oliver Goldsmith, I knew this book would be spot-on in timing. And now that I’ve read this review in the NYT, I want to read the book more than ever.  Consider this:

Mr. Judt’s new book, “Ill Fares the Land,” is a slim and penetrating work, a dying man’s sense of a dying idea: the notion that the state can play a significant role in its citizens’ lives without imperiling their liberties. It makes sense that this book arrives now, not merely during the hideous endgame of the national health-care debate but during mud season; this book’s bleak assessment of the selfishness and materialism that have taken root in Western societies will stick to your feet and muddy your floors. But “Ill Fares the Land” is also optimistic, raw and patriotic in its sense of what countries like the United States and Britain have meant — and can continue to mean — to their people and to the world.

This is one of the reasons I like Judt so much. I feel like his worldview, his views on the role of the state, are so close to my own. I like that although he sticks like anything to the wall of hard pragmatism, he continues to feel and espouse a sense of immense optimism about the world we live in. I mean, “the notion that the state can play a significant role in its citizens’ lives without imperiling their liberties”–this is YES. This is the way I feel about my country and my government.  YES YES YES.

I feel uplifted. I feel enlightened. I feel like I really, really need this book.

Categories: Books · history · smart people

A Book on Stuffing Dead Animals

March 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’m a huge animal lover. Maybe not quite PETA crazy, but certainly crazy to the point where although I grew up partially in Wisconsin, a state where everyone hunts, I remain horrified by and of the practice and can’t kill anything, not even ants on the floor of my apartment. (I don’t disapprove of hunting in cases of overpopulation, by the way–I just personally could never hunt anything.)

Naturally, I’m  just as horrified by the idea of taxidermy. And yet…I’m equally repelled and fascinated by the museum variety–you know, the dioramas at the Natural History Museum, that kind of thing. So I’m also equally repelled and fascinated with this new book on taxidermy.  I really, really want to read it–but then I really, really don’t want the nightmares that are sure to accompany the reading of it.

Either way, if you’re not a weirdo like me, you might enjoy it.

Categories: Books · WTF? · art

A Bunch of Stuff

March 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’m crazy swamped at work so I’m gonna be a lazy ass today and do one big post. Forgive. Also, this picture is of a hoarder’s living room, not mine. I have become totally obsessed with these hoarding shows lately. This hoarding madness seems like the exact opposite of any madness I could ever manifest. It amazes me.  (Is there something wrong with me? The only TV I watch seems to be the kind that documents truly wretched, crazy, twisted, wrong-track lives. Unless it’s MSNBC after work–but good god, with Eric Massa and Rielle Hunter on 24/7, even that’s turned into wrong-track lives central. Hmm.)

I bought Matt Bell’s Wolf Parts. Did you? No? Why the hell not?  Buy it here before the 21st.

This sounds absolutely fascinating. I think it’s a sin that Pearl Buck is as forgotten as she is. I think I want to read this biography.

Holy christ. The new JMWW Special Flash Issue is out and it is packed, my children, packed with zesty tangy crunchy goodness. David Erlewine is apparently not only a talented writer, but he can edit like a badass.  I mean seriously: Charles Lennox,  Gary Moshimer, Seth Fried,  Ethel Rohan, Kyle Minor, Michael Czyzniejewski,  Kevin Wilson, Molly Gaudry, Erin Fitzgerald, Meg Pokrass, Roxane Gay,  Robert Swartwood, Scott Garson, and way way way more immensely talented peeps. I can’t wait to sit down and read this whole thing tonight.

Speaking of sizzling publications, the new Collagist is out today and it looks fantastic, as always. Here’s what’s inside (metaphorically speaking):

In our March 2010 issue, you’ll find new fiction by Amanda Goldblatt, Kathryn Scanlan, Michael Stewart, and Andrew R. Touhy, as well as novel excerpts from Elise Blackwell’s An Unfinished Score and Maile Chapman’s Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto. This month’s poetry is provided by Dilruba Ahmed, Hossannah Asuncion, Tommy Blount, and Joan McMillan, and our non-fiction contributor Danielle Vogel covers even more poetry with her essay “The Ductile Body: A Bridge to Exit to Enter,” about the work of the poets and writers Melissa Buzzeo and Renee Gladman.

In book reviews, we’ve got coverage of Eden Springs by Laura Kasischke, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor, and Best European Fiction, edited by Aleksander Hemon. We’ve also got a review of the now nearly ten-year-old novel The Way the Family Got Away by Michael Kimball, which reviewer John Madera hopes will help restart a conversation about this fine book.

Also, this is a real downer. Who wants to think about what happens to your digital remains when you die? Except maybe you better, especially if you’re a writer. Interesting piece in Wired. H/t Maud Newton.

Finally, I am interviewed by Jesse Bradley over at PANK. We talked women’s bodies, health care, and Congressional cage matches, among other things. Check it out.

Categories: Books · bringing the crazy · literary mags · my work · smart people

Whoa…the vortex of all things cool has formed in my feed reader.

March 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Awesome press (and mag) Keyhole? Check.

Wicked talented writer Matt Bell? Check.

Modern retellings of folk and fairy tales? Check.

That’s right. All three. In one minibook. Order right here.

Mind…blown.

Categories: Books · cool stuff · fairy tales · literary mags

Lincoln Michel Agrees/Disagrees with David Shields

March 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Over at the Rumpus, Lincoln Michel has some good things to say about Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and some points of disagreement he wants to lay out, too:

I cannot be the only one to read a supposedly radical manifesto—the book jacket labels detractors as mere defenders of “the status quo”—and be a little disappointed to learn that the novel is dead (again?) and the literature of our bright, hectic future is the lyric essay and memoir. Even the terms “lyric essay” and “memoir” feel dusty sandwiched between discussions of hip-hop and cell phone stories. In short, I read this book with as much disagreement as agreement. Surely no one writes a manifesto without expecting and even welcoming some push back, so I wanted to lay out of a few of my reactions.

Go. Read. Form opinions.

Categories: Books · smart people

Organized Chaos

March 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

It’s my primary style of living. And it now comes in bookcase form.

h/t NotCot.

Categories: Books · cool stuff

Interview with Sam Lipsyte

March 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Over at Paper Cuts. Good stuff.

Categories: Books · smart people

Adventures With Borders Shoppers

March 4, 2010 · Comments Off

Over at the Millions. I like this.

Categories: Books