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Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield is coming to BookPeople this Wednesday, July 28th at 7PM, to celebrate his new book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. We're going all out for this event, preparing a special 80's themed prize basket (which includes a copy of the new book) to the winner of our 80's Photo Contest. In order to get everyone in the right spirit, Sheffield sent us a list of his TOP TEN 80's KARAOKE JAMS. Enjoy.
A new night out is starting to catch on in crime fiction circles. Noir At The Bar, an evening of drinks and readings by some of the darkest authors, started in Philadelphia with alums like Dennis Tafoya and Duane Swierczynski and moved to St. Louis with the likes of Ice Harvest author Scott Phillips. Now it’s time to move the party to the live music capitol of the world with three great authors and do it Austin style.
This city is changing. New residents and new money are flooding in, causing some to celebrate and others to mourn. Joshua Long, a former Austin resident and scholar, wrote Weird City: A Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, TX to discuss these municipal changes and document the grass roots movements dedicated to preserving the local customs and flavor. Long will be in-store this Saturday (7/17) at 3PM and was kind enough to answer a few questions for the blog via email from his current residence in Switzerland.
Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield, who you may know from his previous book Love is a Mix Tape, has new memoir out called Talking To Girls About Duran Duran. It's all about growing up in the 80's: the music, the fashion, and liking the bands that girls like in order to get the girls to like you.
In 1996, Rolling Stone Magazine sent David Lipsky to interview a brash new writer, a genuine and enlightening new voice who had recently written electrifying features for Harpers and other magazines. According to Lipsky, reading those early articles was, "like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming."
“You can’t fight gravity.” This has become one of my favorite lines in hardboiled fiction. Up there with Eddie Coyle’s monologue about his double set of knuckles and the source of A Drink Before The War’s title, it’s spoken to a gut shot victim in The Wolves of Fairmount Park - the latest from Dennis Tafoya, who in just two books is proving to be a major contender in crime fiction. He uses all of its gritty standards, taking it past standard genre fiction. Much like that line the emotion of his books linger after the immediate impact.
For the last two years, Craig Johnson has consistently been one of our mystery section's bestselling authors. The Cold Dish, the first book concerning northern Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire, seems to always be on the section's top ten, as well as sometimes appearing in the store’s over all ranks. We’re lucky enough to have Craig involved with two upcoming events.
I first spotted John Phillip Santos sitting in the lobby of a San Antonio hotel. I had no idea who he was, but his appearance made me take notice. Santos was dressed in a tuxedo shirt and jeans, wore freshly polished cowboy boots on his feet and had a tan blazer laid across his lap. He has a long mane of peppered gray hair, dark at the temples. I didn't know who he was yet, but he sure wasn't a tourist or business traveler. Santos definitely had an intriguing aura. As he sat in the wingback chair, looking lost in a deep stream of thought, I took another glance and headed to my meeting.
I've been around enough authors to realize they don't necessarily share the personality of their writing. However, the time I've spent with Jonathan Woods and reading his work has never made me ponder the gulf between the two more. This nice, erudite, soft spoken, family man taps into another personality when creating short work that has appeared in Plots With Guns, Pulp Pusher, and Thuglit.
Jake Silverstein's debut book, Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction, is a partly true, partly imagined chronicle of a young journalist's attempt to find his first great story. This search takes Jake from the drought-ridden ranches of West Texas and Mexico, to a poetry contest in Reno, Nevada. We'll … Continue reading Interview with Jake Silverstein, “Nothing Happened and Then It Did”
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