Essays | Raging Biblio-holism

A Room of One’s Own / Three Guineas

November 18, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Two essays of feminism and women’s rights – one is perhaps Woolf’s most famous non-fiction piece and one of the crucial texts in the fight for equality, while the second is lesser-known and far more complex, tackling everything from equality to militarism (all under the context of the patriarchy). The Review: After the rather bracing experience of The Waves, it was nice to return to Woolf and find her (in these texts) at her most plain-spoken. This is […]

Categories: Essays, Non-Fiction • Tags: A Room of One's Own, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Essays, Feminism, Non-Fiction, Politics, Reviews, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf, Woolf 2015

Between the World and Me

July 20, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Taking the form of a letter to his teenage son, Ta-Nehisi Coates delivers an impassioned existentialist look at the realities of being black in America – both through the lens of history, his own and the country’s, and the lens of the present. The Review: I loved this book with a rare kind of passion, but I grappled with not writing a review of it. As the author himself has pointed out on Twitter, this book is not for me, […]

Categories: Essays, Non-Fiction • Tags: 6, Between the World and Me, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Culture, Current Events, Essays, Favorites, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Citizen: An American Lyric

June 3, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Blending prose and poetry, image and text, Claudia Rankine delves into the everyday experience of racism – microaggressions suffered by heroes and ordinary people both – and paints a chilling picture of America (and the world) today. The Review: I’ve taken to marking with post-its the poetry that I read. It’s easier to flip back through and find the pieces you really loved, you know? Citizen, for several reasons, was marked with those long skinny post-it tabs and […]

Categories: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: America, American Life, An American Lyric, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Citizen, Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine, Essays, Gender, Graywolf Press, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Politics, Race, Racism, Reviews, Rodney King, Trayvon Martin

Not That Kind of Girl

December 4, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Lena Dunham, writer and actress and director and twentysomething provocatrix, tells you a little bit about what she’s “learned” in essays and lists and stories that are heartfelt, funny, sad, moving, enraging, and pretty much every other range of emotions. The Review: You’re not reading this book if you don’t have some appreciation for Lena Dunham. I mean, let’s just put that out there, straightaway: she’s a polarizing figure in our culture and there are plenty of […]

Categories: Memoir, Non-Fiction • Tags: Advice, Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Essays, Film, Girls, HBO, How-To, Lena Dunham, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Not That Kind of Girl, Reviews, Television, Tiny Furniture

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

November 3, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: A collection of some of DFW’s best-known long-form essays, including two about tennis, one about a cruise ship, and one about David Lynch’s Lost Highway. The Review: Alright. Knives out, folks – this is going to be an unpopular statement (and it’s only after discussing this book with my BookClub, leading to one of the more delightfully heated discussions we’ve ever had, that I feel comfortable saying it). I do not like David Foster Wallace. In fact, the […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, America, Arguments, Book Review, Book Reviews, BookClub, Books, Cruise Ships, David Foster Wallace, David Lynch, DNF, Essays, Incomplete, Non-Fiction, Reviews, State Fairs, Television, Tennis

100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write

August 8, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Sarah Ruhl, author of impossibly beautiful plays, brings us a collection of short essays on the theatrical experience, on motherhood, on writing, and on creativity in general. The Review: My last performance in college was in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. (Incidentally, it was one of the first book reviews on this blog.) And it was in college that I developed an abiding love for Ms. Ruhl’s plays – for their oddity, their beauty, their poignancy, and eventually for […]

Categories: Non-Fiction • Tags: 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, Acting, Advance Review, Book Reviews, Books, Creativity, Essays, Non-Fiction, Playwriting, Reviews, Sarah Ruhl, Theater, Writing

My 1980s and Other Essays

May 2, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: A series of essays, autobiographical in that they address both Koestenbaum’s life but also the art & ephemera that crossed his path. This is a collection about a time and about how that time impacts the present – about cultural heavyweights of literature, art, and film but also about the creation of those same things. The Review: I can’t think of a collection of essays I’ve read before that was both so insular and so universal. Often, essay […]

Categories: Non-Fiction • Tags: 1980s, Essays, FSG Originals, My 1980s, My 1980s and Other Essays, Non-Fiction, Wayne Koestenbaum

Pulphead

August 31, 2013 by Drew

The Short Version: A collection of idiosyncratic essays pitched as storytelling, mostly about this strange and varied land we call America. Profiles of Axl Rose and Michael Jackson butt up against stories of more-than-a-little-loony naturalists and dying Old Southern writers while a odyssey into a Christian rock festival and the experience of having one’s house turned into a TV show set bookend the whole thing. The overall sensation is one of humor, awe, and a little bit of communal understanding […]

Categories: Non-Fiction • Tags: America, Anthropology, Essays, FSG Originals, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Music, Non-Fiction, Pulphead, Sociology

A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

December 25, 2012 by Drew

The Short Version: A collection of Dickens’ most well-known Christmas tales, including the piece d’resistance – A Christmas Carol. Two novellas as well as several short stories and essays, all about the holiday season and the spirit of generosity that suffuses this time of year. The Review: And so we come to the end of the year – the end of the admittedly ambitious (for me, anyway) attempt to read the “Great Works of Charles Dickens” (as proscribed by Penguin and their […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, Dickens 2012, Essays, Fiction, Holiday, Literature, Short Stories, The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Essays