Eugene Weekly

Bob Suren’s new book, Crate Digger: An Obsession with Punk Records — out now from Portland publishing house Microcosm Publishing —  tells the story of the author’s love affair with punk music. The journey takes Suren from band member to record storeowner, fanzine editor, radio show host and record label founder.  “For many years I was self-employed,” Suren tells EW, “but for many years punk rock was my boss.” Continue reading →

Portland author Patrick deWitt is a pig for romance.  “I’m an old softy, you know,” deWitt tells EW, “a fool for love and all that; a pig for it.”  Continue reading →

Entering into the gloriously tattered tradition of strung-out criminal lit ranging from Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Seattle rocker turned author Danny Bland has written a novel that reads like a beastly scream into the dark mythology of ‘90s Seattle — a gilded wasteland where junkies reared on Iggy and Sabbath turned filthy power chords into gold and cosmonauts of the apocalypse pimped hip to the culture vultures. Continue reading →

Jon Krakauer doesn’t start Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (Doubleday, $28.95) with one of the worst scenes in the book; he eases into it with the police pulling up to tell a young woman named Allison Huguet that her rapist has confessed.  Only a couple pages later does Krakauer tell of the assault and of Beth Huguet’s horror when her daughter calls her at 4 am gasping with panicked sounds into the phone before screaming, “He’s chasing me! Help me! Save me! Mom!”  Continue reading →

When we heard Christian Appy talk about his new book at a Morse Center event on the UO campus last month, we knew American Reckoning was a must read for more understanding of the “Vietnam War and Our National Identity,” as he subtitles it. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of two previous books on the Vietnam War. Continue reading →