Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
Behind every great writer hides an asshole. Dostoyevsky was a religious freak with a gambling problem. William Burroughs plinked a slug through his wife’s forehead. Faulkner guzzled a half-gallon of...
View ArticleLike your granny’s sex diary
Well-written literary junk food is a fantastic palate cleanser for people whose job it is to read a lot of nonfiction. When you throw sex into the mix — especially forbidden sex — you’ve got...
View ArticleFade to Black
In the age of the quick fix and pop-up porn, you gotta hand it to E.L. James for hoodwinking the hoi polloi into dicking around with something as atavistic and temperate as on-the-page erotica. Fifty...
View ArticleCircle of Heck
Eugene will soon be graced with the presence of an author so clever, elaborate and terrifying that he has channeled his talents into writing some of the most interesting and “obstinately obscure” books...
View ArticleClose is Fine
Eliot Treichel calls Eugene home but he misses Wisconsin, and his debut collection of short stories, Close Is Fine, is a tribute to his home state. “It’s where I grew up,” Treichel says. “I wanted to...
View ArticleLocal Author on WWII
History buff Jack Radey never intended to write a book about WWII, but that’s exactly what he ended up doing. On Jan. 27, Radey and coauthor Charles Sharp will present their book The Defense of Moscow...
View ArticleSouthern Gothic in the Northwest
The work of illustrator and graphic novelist Elizabeth Blue might best be described as “Southern Gothic.” Her approach incorporates themes of romance, crime, fairy tales and family relationships to...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Women
The opening chapter of The Missing Italian Girl plays out like a scene from a Merchant Ivory film; the year is 1897, the city is Paris and three shrouded figures dodge the ghoulish cast of gas lamps...
View ArticleEating Weeds
The first time she pulled weeds out of someone’s yard in Portland and made them into a salad, Rebecca Lerner didn’t much like them, saying they had “an unpleasant texture that suggested I was eating...
View ArticleThe Big One
A failed plan to bring nuclear power to the “earthquake-free” Northwest led instead to the discovery that our region is due for a massive temblor. The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, aka...
View ArticleChick Lit and the Bard
Chick-lit light with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and some love advice from the Bard thrown in, that’s Elizabeth the First Wife (Prospect Park, $15.95). Elizabeth Lancaster is a single community...
View ArticleTurn Back Time
Anybody out there in this youth-obsessed USA who wants to read yet another word about aging?Or, if we really are youth-obsessed, maybe we want to learn everything we can to slow the march away from...
View ArticleFighting for Yosemite
Graphic the Valley (Tyrus Books, 271 pages. $16.95), a first novel by South Eugene High School teacher Peter Brown Hoffmeister, is an ambitious and complicated read. The book draws together rock...
View ArticleDeus Ex Marina
Living in seemingly effortless harmony, a Marin County, Calif., couple and their three children are in for a rude awakening. Is an untold truth a lie? Mermaid Drowning (Autumn Moon Books, 355 pages....
View ArticleHow to Build Character(s)
“I was definitely a complete nerd. I sat at the lunch table alone and got picked last for P.E., but books saved my life,” says Cidney Swanson, local novelist for young adult audiences and traveling...
View ArticleNorthwest Nuance
The first person who waxed eloquent over Oregon author Brian Doyle’s Mink River (Oregon State University Press, $18.95) was a sportswriter for the Salt Lake Tribune. The second was a lovely woman I met...
View ArticlePlay It Again
Journalist Robert K. Elder has authored one of those cool, catch-all books about the movies that should appeal to film fans of every stripe and persuasion. The Best Films You’ve Never Seen compiles...
View ArticleThe Man, The Smith, The Legend
There’s a lot of B.S. in Morrissey’s Autobiography (Penguin/Putnam, $30): It’s self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-mythologizing, full of melodramatic humor and humorous melodrama. If The Queen is...
View ArticlePassion of the Pussy
In Eugene, we’re used to weird. In some neighborhoods, shooting a politically charged, hardcore punk music video in public would solicit no more than a passing glance. Doing it uninvited in a local...
View ArticleToke and Roll (the Dice)
Everyone’s heard of drinking games; they’re old news, man. In this hiptastic new time, with dispensary lines around the corner and even squares lighting up, weed steps closer and closer to social...
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