books
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Original Sin exposes the ancient connection between sex, drugs, and the church
Posted by Shawn Alff on Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Rewriting romance with bay area BDSM author, Riley Murphy
Posted by Shawn Alff on Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 8:58 AM
Tampa Bay area writer Riley Murphy has not so much swept romance readers off their feet as she has dominated them into delightful submission. The success she expected to take three years has taken nine months. She recently won the Ellora's Cave 2012 SuperStar Award and her first book, Reclaimed Surrender, is a 2013 Epic eBook Award finalist. The holiday romance novel she co-wrote, Full of Possibilities, is set to be released this November and the third book in her "Surrender" series, Required Surrender, is expected to come out on the first of the year. While I've only corresponded with Riley through email, this interview was enough for her to make me blush — and to start searching for photos of her online. It's safe to say she knows a thing or two about the art of seducing with words alone.
Unfaithfulness is funny in Cheat: A Man's Guide to Infidelity
A Q & A with comedian Joe DeRosa on his field guide to philandering
Posted by Shawn Alff on Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 8:56 AM
Monday, October 22, 2012
Lehane and Koryta sign books at Four Green Fields tonight
Posted by Julie Garisto on Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 8:44 AM
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Retracing 9 million steps through a tropical hell in Walking the Amazon
Posted by Shawn Alff on Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:19 PM
If you understand Mallory's logic, you'll appreciate Walking the Amazon, Ed Stafford's memoir about how he became the first person to walk the length of the Amazon River.
The book sets a staggering pace, especially considering how slow the journey of 8,000 kilometers progresses. Not only is the river surrounded by some of the densest jungles in the world, but for much of the year the rainforest is flooded, turning the land into a murky swamp that Stafford has to wade through for days on end.
In the hands of someone who spends more time writing about expeditions than experiencing them, the journey could have easily been exaggerated and overwritten, particularly in regards to the dangers.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Traveling through The Twelve Rooms of the Nile with Tampa author Enid Shomer
Posted by Shawn Alff on Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 10:32 AM
Shomer is an award-winning poet and short story writer who's written six previous books, but this is her first novel. I sat down with Shomer in her Tampa home days before the global release of The Twelve Rooms of the Nile.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Between the sheets: Top 10 most provocative books out this month
Posted by Shawn Alff on Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:09 PM
by Lindy West (8/7/2012)
Publisher's Description: This guide from the writers and editors of The Stranger has the information you will actually need that no one else will tell you—for college and for the rest of your existence—including: how to not get a STD, what the music you like says about you, how to turn a crush into something more, how to come out (should you happen to be gay), how to binge drink and not die, how to do drugs (and which ones you should never do), tips on flirting with film nerds, and Dan Savage's very best advice on sex and love.
Monday, July 30, 2012
On the Island: How Tracey Garvis Graves's romance novel survived the barren literary seas
Posted by Shawn Alff on Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:57 AM
Friday, July 27, 2012
More summer reading — for the beach, the mountain cabin or even just your couch
Posted by William McKeen on Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 12:23 PM
Here are some more things to consider for room in your beach bag or your knapsack, depending on your destination.
Short story collections are a tough sell, but nothing is better for the short-bite approach to reading than a good book of stories. I've always been fond of the Flannery O'Connor and John Cheever collections, but Alix Ohlin's new book, Signs and Wonders (Vintage, $15) is one of the best story collections I've read in a decade. These are some cracking-good tales — deep and rich as any novel, with twists and turns you don't expect. We encounter fascinating characters at just the moment their will and mettle are tested. How many story collections fall into that can't-put-it-down category? This one does. These are tough, original, funny and tragic, all at once. Cannot recommend this book highly enough. By the way, Ohlin published Signs and Wonders the same day she published her novel, Inside (Knopf, $25). Can't recall anyone being so logo-audacious since that day in 1968 when Tom Wolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Pump-House Gang. The New York Times raved: "The SAME Day: heeeeeewack!!!; Too Freakin' MUCH!!!" We might echo the Times' sentiment.
Honky Tonk (W.W. Norton, $50) is a glorious, big book of photographs, so it deserves its own beach towel. Henry Horenstein here collects 40 years of photographs of great country musicians — many of them while performing near his New England home, but many of them at the old Ryman Auditorium or Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville. There are classic portraits of Mother Maybelle Carter, Speck Rhodes, Harmonica Frank Floyd, and other entertainers, but the book also turns the camera toward the audience for a loving and leering look at the Country Music Fan. Some of them have hair that defies all laws of nature. It's a fascinating look at that time and a celebration of the closeness between artist and audience in country music. Great to see some of those faces of the old, traditional country music and contrast them with today's bland, middle-of-the-road country singers. There are still great, authentic country singers today, but few of them reach the sort of audience that the manufactured ones do.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Sports reporter, Roxanne Wilder, moonlights as the chick lit author of, In the Stars
Posted by Shawn Alff on Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 8:00 AM
- Dylan Melcher of 3Square Studios
- Roxanne Wilder, "Sabrina Simon"
