• Hello Visitor!
  • Eugene Weekly loves you!
Share |

Books

February 28, 2013

The opening chapter of The Missing Italian Girl plays out like a scene from a Merchant Ivory film; the year is 1897, the city is Paris and three shrouded figures dodge the ghoulish cast of gas lamps near the Gare de l’Est as they bring a special (and posthumous) delivery to one of the city’s dumping waters, the Basin de La Villette. In the city of lights, on a warm summer night at the turn of the century, the trio is taking a great risk.

February 21, 2013

The work of illustrator and graphic novelist Elizabeth Blue might best be described as “Southern Gothic.” Her approach incorporates themes of romance, crime, fairy tales and family relationships to fashion compelling visual narratives.

January 24, 2013

History buff Jack Radey never intended to write a book about WWII, but that’s exactly what he ended up doing. On Jan. 27, Radey and coauthor Charles Sharp will present their book The Defense of Moscow 1941 at Tsunami Books, where they will discuss their new historical discoveries regarding a pivotal battle between the Germans and the Soviets. 

November 7, 2012

Eliot Treichel calls Eugene home but he misses Wisconsin, and his debut collection of short stories, Close Is Fine, is a tribute to his home state. “It’s where I grew up,” Treichel says. “I wanted to understand it. I guess I started to miss it once I left. I was working on all the stories together to be a book.” And nostalgia for home permeates Close Is Fine, focused mainly on rural areas of the state and the characters that inhabit them.

October 24, 2012

Eugene will soon be graced with the presence of an author so clever, elaborate and terrifying that he has channeled his talents into writing some of the most interesting and “obstinately obscure” books you’ll ever read. Dale Basye, an author from Portland, will be a featured speaker at the Young Writers Association (YWA) Scare-A-Thon FUNdraiser on Saturday, Oct. 27. Basye will be reading excerpts from his Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go book series. 

May 31, 2012

In the age of the quick fix and pop-up porn, you gotta hand it to E.L. James for hoodwinking the hoi polloi into dicking around with something as atavistic and temperate as on-the-page erotica. Fifty Shades of Grey — the first installment in a trilogy of erotic novels that started online as Twilight fanfiction — sold more than 10 million copies in six weeks in the U.S. alone. This, despite repeated assaults by high-brow literary critics as well as pop sexpert Dr.

May 31, 2012

Well-written literary junk food is a fantastic palate cleanser for people whose job it is to read a lot of nonfiction. When you throw sex into the mix — especially forbidden sex — you’ve got entertainment plus the antidote to becoming a snob who wants to look down on whatever is trendy in popular literature.

February 2, 2012

Behind every great writer hides an asshole. Dostoyevsky was a religious freak with a gambling problem. William Burroughs plinked a slug through his wife’s forehead. Faulkner guzzled a half-gallon of rye every day before noon. Shakespeare only willed his wife the spare bed.

I’m far from a great writer, but I sure can be an asshole sometimes. It’s true. Maybe you should stop reading this.