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★★★★☆ Tinted in soft pastels and silhouetted with simply-rendered pen-drawn figures, Tom Gauld’s delightfully erudite cartoons show a cultural landscape awkwardly close to anachronism. These strips exist in a world where classical literature goes...
★★★★☆ In 1940, surrealist artist Leonora Carrington suffered a psychotic breakdown. She was in her early twenties, and her partner, celebrated master of Surrealism Max Ernst, was just taken from her at rifle-point and...
★★★☆☆ Shame on UK Native Reni Eddo-Lodge for titling her debut with a bold declaration, then walking it back in the book’s second sentence. In this caveat, she clarifies that she’s not abandoning all...
★★★★☆ Twenty-first century technology has allowed us to disappear into our machines, to hide behind avatars and fake user info and engage, anonymously, with the digital world around us. Although people can become anybody...
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Leonardo da Vinci may be the best biography of the year. It has certainly received the most hype, and in this instance it rises to the level of approbation...
★★★★☆ Regional novels published by small presses face great difficulty gaining traction in the massive world of publishing. Tens of thousands of books are published each year, most of them by major publishers who...
★★★☆☆ When Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut City on Fire was published in 2015, its hype preceded much discussion of its literary merit. At nearly 1,000 pages and earning Hallberg an unheard-of seven-figure book deal,...
★★☆☆☆ “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” In Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson begins at the beginning – the very beginning, as in 14 billion...
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Pretty took the will to be so and the money to do it and the time to see to it and the sleep to maintain it, and Ella didn’t...
