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Clint
The Invisibles by Grant Morrison
“Grant Morrison just released his wonderfully eccentric autobiography/history of superheroes called “Supergods,” which made me think about re-reading one of the best superhero series ever, The Invisibles, which is about a group of anarchist heroes who use chaos, magick, hallucinogenic drugs and brute strength to fight the evil Illuminati cabals of the world. Originally released in the late ’90s, these books kick major ass!!!
(Note to those who click through to buy this book: for some reason, our system is pulling up a different cover image than the cover we actually have on our shelf, which is pictured directly above. I do not know why.)
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Bosco
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick
“I’m reading this for the This Book Could Be Your Life book club. It’s the definitive Elvis Presley bio. You can take all the others and throw them away. This is absolutely the best biography I’ve ever read and the best biography of Elvis out there. It’s stunning. Guralnick describes the scene where Elvis, Scott and Billy are at Sun Studios recording Elivs’ first single, the genesis of what we think of as rock and roll, without being decorative or floral. You get the full bore feeling of how important it was, and how it all happened by accident.”
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Salvador
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
“I’m only a couple of chapters in and so far it’s really fun. Unexpected. It’s about the last werewolf on Earth who decides he’s been alive so long that life’s not worth living, it’s no fun anymore, so he hires a werewolf assassin to kill him. Then something unexpected happens that makes him want to live.”
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Manfred
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields by Charles Bowden
“This is about the drug war in Juarez. He’s really poetic in his writing, so even thought it’s nonfiction, it reads like fiction, but it’s so real at the same time because it’s so sad. So far it’s all about death and the drug war.”
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Julie
Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life by Ann Beattie
“This book isn’t out until November, but I can’t wait that long to talk about it. I’m a fan of Beattie’s short stories and was intrigued but skeptical about this – a fictionalization of Patricia Nixon (wife of former President Dick N.) that is also supposed to function as a book of advice and wisdom for fiction writers. Beattie totally pulls it off, and does so with such fluidity between her subject, analysis of other works, and advice gleaned from her own writing experience that you hardly notice she’s shifting focus. This has also been interesting for me to read as I was born during the Reagan administration and missed out on the finer historical details of Nixon’s time in office in the blinding wake of his Watergate infamy. Beattie does a fabulous job of imagining what it must have been like to stand alongside this man as he rose and fell. I can’t wait to start putting this directly into readers’ hands.”
BookPeople 