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What kind of fool?

June 5, 2013 by Hank Stuever 1 Comment

The One-Man Book Club has been meeting in secret for quite some time over at Goodreads, if you ever feel like following along. I’ve been slowly going back through my shelves and adding thoughts and reviews of books I read years ago. For some reason, all this time I’ve managed to never notice a neato widget where I can add my Goodreads reviews to this blog. Here are some recent reads, and there are plenty more where these came from …

Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant ChefBlood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bones Blood and Butter, book reviews, books, Gabrielle Hamilton, Goodreads, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, One-Man Book Club, writing

One-Man Book Club’s summer reading credits

September 1, 2011 by Hank Stuever 8 Comments

Oh, ranger! Summer is over!

And so the One-Man Book Club reconvenes one last time* (more on that down below) for its summer vacation extra-reading credit. Books came along on a lot journeys since early spring: Out to Kansas and back, out to Albuquerque and back, on a train to Staunton, Va., and back, and — for 11 days in late June/early July — a 2,100-mile road trip through New England with the One-Man Book Club’s favorite traveling companion, the One-Man Photo Archive. Then the One-Man Book Club took a 16-day business trip out to Los Angeles to ingest the upcoming fall TV season, with books offering the only salve from long days of press conferences and network spin about bad pilot episodes. Then a quick trip to Jersey for a wedding in the family.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 1975, Adrian Tomine Scenes from a Marriage, An American Family, book reviews, book writing, books, Donovan Hohn Moby-Duck, Douglas Couplan, Geraldine Brooks Caleb's Crossing, Goodreads, Henry David Thoreau, Humiliation Wayne Koestenbaum, Janet Malcolm Iphigenia in Forest Hills, Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Good Squad, Louis Bayard School of Night, Marshall McLuhan You Know Nothing of My Work!, Moby-Duck, One-Man Book Club, Pat Loud, Pat Loud A Woman's Story, Retromania Simon Reynolds, Stolen World Jennie Erin Smith, the Loud Family, The Maine Woods Thoreau, The School of Night, This Life in Your Hands Melissa Coleman, Tin Fey Bossypants, Wayne Koestenbaum

One-Man Book Club takes the EZPass lane

October 3, 2010 by Hank Stuever Leave a Comment

Not-So-EZ-Pass1

At this rate, the One-Man Book Club will soon be meeting at St. Elizabeths. (And no, Mr. Hinckley, we’re not going to read any books about Jodie Foster.) I actually had a fantasy during all the deadlines for fall TV reviews: If I could get just sick enough — something that required convalescence but not, you know, pain — I could read more. Books have been my only mental refuge from television lately (as opposed to what, exercise??), but you’ll notice the One-Man Book Club choices have been rather lite. Television eats your brain.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book reviews, books, Bret Easton Ellis, Chip Kidd, Dear Money, Fifth Avenue 5 AM, Gunn's Golden Rules, Imperial Bedrooms, LA, Lisa Birnbach, Los Angeles, Martha McPhee, Mary Roach, One-Man Book Club, Packing for Mars, Sam Wasson, Slake, Take Ivy, Tim Gunn, True Prep, writing

‘Hamlet’s BlackBerry’ by William Powers! “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Read this blog and WIN A COPY!

July 7, 2010 by Hank Stuever 3 Comments

hamletsOkay, everyone, settle down, and stop your goddamn clickety-clicking and distracted surfing!

I have analog media to promote (look, a book!), or, if you must, some kindling for your Kindle, an iBook to get your little greasy fingerprints all over. This is the full Tonsil blog endorsement of Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers. It just came out. I got to read a galley a while back. You’ll soon be reading about it in all the right places.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book reviews, books, Hamlet's BlackBerry, Internet, Martha Sherrill, William Powers, writing

One-Man Book Club: How many Bedwetters are checked into Hotel Theory? Less than zero.

July 6, 2010 by Hank Stuever Leave a Comment

No intro, no explan, nothing but books. Just trying to just say, yep, read ’em and here’s what the entire book club (still just the one member) thought. Need to clear it all out before the real summer vacation reading starts later this month.

First up, Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis. This is a re-reading, 25 years or so after the fact.

Actually, 23 Julys ago, I think? Here is the cover of the very same copy I read back then and have kept on various shelves in various apartments and dwellings all these years — still smelling faintly of Bain de Soleil and Sun-In and a waft of one’s completely manufactured angst on a semesterly break home from one’s gruelingly existential life at a private college…

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book reviews, books, Bret Easton Ellis, D.J. Waldie, Daniel Clowes, Details magazine, Gabrielle Zevin, George W.S. Trow, Gertrude Stein, Hotel Theory, Imperial Bedrooms, Less Than Zero, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, Meghan Daum, One-Man Book Club, Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter, The Hole We're In, Wayne Koestenbaum, Wilson

One-Man Book Club Backlog! Independence Day Clearance Sale Going On All Week!

June 28, 2010 by Hank Stuever 4 Comments

The members of the One-Man Book Club have been reading ’em faster than all the members (total: one) can get on here to blogscuss ’em. I’m going to try to clear out all the One-Man Book Club recent selections this week, and include some selections where the membership couldn’t finish the book. Ready? Chug!

n338168To start, here’s a book I liked very much and recommend to others: Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction, by Jake Silverstein, which came out in the spring. I dug it deeply, starting with the title and alluring jacket. But another journalist I know (someone who is really keen about innovation in nonfiction), said he dropped out after page 40 or thereabouts. So there’s that.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Albuquerque Tribune, American Voyeur, Austin, Austin Chronicle, Beg Borrow Steal, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, book reviews, Eileen Welsome, Entertainment Weekly, fiction, HeLa cancer cells, Jake Silverstein, journalism, Junot Diaz, Karen Valby, Marcos de Niza, Michael Greenberg, New Orleans, New York writers, Nothing Happened and Then It Did, One-Man Book Club, Peter Bognanni, Plutonium Experiment, Rebecca Skloot, Texas Monthly, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The House of Tomorrow, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Utopia Texas, Welcome to Utopia, West Texas, why are so many books about New York?

Falling behind on my wrapping (up)

December 14, 2009 by Hank Stuever Leave a Comment

stlouis1

ST. LOUIS: What you’re about to read happened days ago, and I’m just getting around to filing a blog report. I’m on a train right now to New York to do a reading tonight at the Half King bar in Chelsea. It starts at 7 p.m., if you’re anywhere nearby.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book promotion, book reviews, books, Curtis Sittenfeld, Half King bar, Loyola Maroon, Pudd'nHead, San Antonio Express News, San Jose Mercury News, Steve Blow, tinsel, West End Word, writing

Some of my favorite books of the decade

December 13, 2009 by Hank Stuever 2 Comments

Gilligans-Wake-BAll these books-of-the-year and books-of-the-decade lists are out now. I’m too far behind on ’09 to make any sort of guess about what book I liked most. But I can feel some coalescence about the decade by just looking around my study. If a book stuck around from my circa-2000 apartment and made it here to my 140 square-foot retreat in 2005, and is still here today, it must’ve meant I thought it was a pretty freakin’ good read. Here are faves from the ’00s, I think. I’m sure I’ve left something out, likely because I gave my copy away to someone else to read. There has to be more to this list, and I’ll realize later “Oh, no, I left off [blank]!” but I also like the pop-quiz nature of this blog post, on which I’ll spend no more than 15 minutes throwing together a list. No particular order…

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: American Wife, Ann Gerhart, Barbara Ehrenreich, best books of 2000s, book reviews, books, Cormac McCarthy, Curtis Sittenfeld, David Finkel, Foer, Food Court Druids, George Saunders, Geraldine Brooks, Gilligan's Wake, Harbor, Home Land, Joan Didion, Jonathan Miles, Lorraine Adams, Margaret Atwood, Marjorie Williams, Mark Salzman, Michael Chabon, Robert Lanham, sam lipsyte, Steve Martin, Tom Carson, Washington Post, writing

Notes by Northwest (and more reviews!)

December 6, 2009 by Hank Stuever 2 Comments

powells11

INARA

Inara Verzemnieks

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Anne Rodgers, Bellingham, book reviews, book tour, Bookreporter, books, Clyde Common, Holidash, Inara Verzemnieks, Nancy Rommelmann, Palm Beach Post, Portland, Powells, Seattle Times, Tan Vinh, tinsel, Village Books, writing

The voice of God on I-5

December 4, 2009 by Hank Stuever 2 Comments

How’s the book doing? Meh, is my overall hunch. I felt a bit down about that for a while yesterday.

Landed in Seattle right after sunset, rented a car (sporty little Pontiac G5) and drove down to Portland in heavy traffic on I-5, with fog and some rain and a sense of vintage Pacific Northwest foreboding, getting here around 10 p.m. Checked into the hotel and was immediately lured into the cozy restaurant. Two glasses of wine and my whole perspective changed. This is fun. This is what I wanted to do. My life is fine and my book’s not bad either.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: audiobook, book reviews, book tour, books, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oklahoma, Ray Porter, Rick Rogers Oklahoman, Stiletto Mom, tinsel

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