It’s Christmas in July for science-fiction and fantasy fans. In the coming weeks, both “American Tolkien” George R. R. Martin and urban fantasy master Jim Butcher will flood the market with new books for their respective series. Blogs are a-flutter with the news that a couple hundred copies of Martin’s…
Alamo Drafthouse’s Texas Monthly Rolling Roadshow has been kicking up dust around the Lone Star State for the last month, screening 10 Texas film gems in their locales of conception: Blood Simple in Austin, The Searchers in Groesbeck and No Country For Old Men in Marfa, etc. But the finale…
You came, you voted…and, yeah, you dissed a dead guy, a legendary musician and a cinematic smartass by quite a large measure, and an improv queen by notsomuch. At the close of the poll, historian Erik Larson beat the pack scoring a little over 40 percent of the total votes…
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the death of one of literature’s manliest men: Ernest Hemingway. About a month ago, author Marty Beckerman released his latest book, The Heming Way. I figured it might be a tribute until I read the subhead, How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested,…
Will you be joining the Mixmaster Online Book Club for its inaugural selection? Make sure you make your opinion known by voting for the book you want to read. As of right now, Erik Larson’s historical In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin…
“Accio Pottermore!” For a full week, hundreds of thousands of Potter Heads have uttered this command as they waited for the unveiling of JK Rowling’s website and wondered what it would actually be. The time finally came today. Pottermore is an exclusive interactive website for fans of all ages, and…
Most writers – even the successful ones – only fantasize about publishing a best-selling book, much less see their work translated onto the big screen by a team of Hollywood A-listers. Both happened to S.C. Gwynne, author of the wildly popular Empire of the Summer Moon. Gwynne spoke to an…
You there, with your Kindles, Nooks and bound sheets of paper. Would you join us? Would you read, along with us, books of the fictional and non-fictional, the popular and the possibly obscure?We’re starting a book club, see: The Mixmaster Book Club. Clever name, right?We’ll designate a portion of a…
On the eve of his first novel, The Story of Forgetting, I spent a few days in Plano with Stefan Merrill Block and his family reporting the May 1, 2008 Observer cover story, “Forget Me Not.” Block is one of the most acclaimed young writers to come out of Texas…
When he graduated from Miami University of Ohio, Austin Kleon, like many young writers, didn’t know where to start his career. But instead of staring at a blank screen waiting for the Muse to deliver a Great American Novel, Kleon put his own pen and ink on other writers’ words…
Heather McDonald has been lied to. By Chelsea Handler. Good ones, too. She wrote about them in May hardback release The Lies That Chelsea Told Me. She’s coming to town (Verizon Theatre, actually) this Saturday to relive those horrific nightmares…and it’s hysterical. Of course, there’s a lot more to her…
Over the past dozen years, Texas journalist Mark Seal, 58, has worked his way onto a fascinating beat, writing lengthy investigative reportage for Vanity Fair about the foibles of the ultra-wealthy. He’s taken over where the late Dominick Dunne left off, spinning stories involving the rich, famous and felonious from…
Kids in Dallas are so lucky. There are always cool free things for them to do, and they have time to do them as long as their parents will take them. Take the first BooksmART Festival at the Dallas Museum of Art this past Saturday. The museum hummed with kids…
Nattily dressed in a dark suit and red and blue striped tie, serious historian David McCullough let his droll humor shine through last night during his Arts & Letters Live appearance at the Fairmont Hotel. His new book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, maps the octopus-like reach of French…
It was 1970. I was 12 years old, sitting the dark of Lowe’s 83rd Street, a movie theater in New York City, when I had my first psychedelic experience. No, nobody slipped a tab in my Milk Duds. I was watching The Phantom Tollbooth, the first and so far only…
Sex, spies and Sookie Stackhouse: that’s what makes our first summer reading list go ’round. Brace yourself; there’s not a Stieg Larsson novel in sight. This month, in honor of summer vacation, we attempt the daunting task of narrowing down books for the beach. Beach reading is the most democratic…
Pico Iyer is a travel writer’s travel writer, one of a small elite among the living (also Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Jan Morris) whose travel writing ranks as literature. In an era when most travel publications want stories about Five Fab Luxury Hotels for Dogs or Ten Terrific Places to…
Conspiracy theories can be fun, right? It’s a lot cooler to believe that little green men from some distant planet crashed on a Roswell ranch in July 1947 than to think that the Soviets were trying to scare Americans with a stunt straight out of a science fiction novel. But…
Star Jones was in town Friday night promoting her new novel, Satan’s Sisters, a fictitious behind-the-scenes look at the sordid lives and conflicting personalities of five women who host a daytime talk show. Imagine that. After lap-band surgery, shedding 160 pounds — “a whole person,” she said — and open…
Juicy Fruit. That’s the answer to the question I’ve had since I first read (and then reread) The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. So I’m grateful to the person who asked author Erik Larson about his inspiration for the book…
I’m not ashamed — I’ve totally watched Celebrity Apprentice this season. And while I found myself irritated by the scheming of TV personality, author and lawyer Star Jones, I gotta say, she knew how to play the game when she wasn’t the project manager. Delegate, work below the radar, call…
On the occasional occasions when I watch The Biggest Loser, I’m in it for the weigh-in: the glory of success, the tragedy of defeat, the big people in little clothes, the gradual emergence of muscles, the transformations. I love a good makeover. The other stuff — the sweating, the grunting,…
