Book Review: Life Before the Internet

A fascinating look back at a slower, simpler time, when Amazon was just a river.

There was life before Google and smartphones, but few would recognize it today. We had more free time, as we didn't spend hours on social media. Our children roamed free and learned to fend for themselves. We enjoyed the freedom and space that came from being unreachable, and we couldn't take work home. We didn't need to invent slow living; it was part of the deal! See how the last unconnected generation used to live. Catch the tempo of everyday life, from home and school to work and leisure - and perhaps reflect on what we might learn.

Book Review: The Needle and the Lens

What movie do you think of when you hear “The Sound of Silence”? Better yet, what song comes to mind when you think of The Graduate? The link between film and song endures as more than a memory. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movies and pop music, a phenomenon Nate Patrin tracks through the past fifty years, revealing the power of music in movies to move the needle in popular culture.

These commentaries run the gamut from comedic irony to cheap-thrills excitement to deeply felt drama, all of which Patrin examines in pairings such as American Graffiti and “Do You Want to Dance?”; Saturday Night Fever and “Disco Inferno”; Apocalypse Now and “The End”; Wayne’s World and “Bohemian Rhapsody”; and more.

Book Review: The Fiction Writer

The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel, a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.

At first, the job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier. But nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia delves into the past the more questions she has. Before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.

Book Review: If You Would Have Told Me

We think we know John Stamos. The beloved actor of television (Full House, ER, General Hospital), film, and Broadway grew up in front of the cameras and drummed his way into our hearts as an honorary Beach Boy. In a candid memoir, readers can peek into the heart of this familiar face. It's a rollicking insider look at Hollywood, fame, fortune, and failure. It's a tender treaty on love, friendship, and fatherhood. Throughout it all, Stamos maintains a sense of wonderment captured in the title If You Would Have Told Me.

Book Review: Inside Out

For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight – or the headlines.

Even as she was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Throughout her rise to fame and during some of the most pivotal moments of her life, Demi battled addiction, body image issues, and childhood trauma that would follow her for years – all while juggling a skyrocketing career and at times negative public perception. As her success grew, Demi found herself questioning if she belonged in Hollywood, if she was a good mother, a good actress – and, always, if she was simply good enough.

Book Review: In Pieces

One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen.

With raw honesty and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

Book Review: Robert B. Parker's Broken Trust

Andrew Crain has it all: his groundbreaking work with lithium has made him one of the world’s richest men. He is universally adored and admired; that is, until Crain’s beautiful wife, Laura, comes to Spenser hoping that he can find out what skeletons lurk in her husband’s closet. Though Crain is a generous philanthropist and loving family man, she is concerned—he has recently become secretive, bordering on paranoid, and prone to violent outbursts. Laura wants Spenser to find out what has gotten into her husband, before it’s too late.

As Spenser digs into the billionaire’s past, he realizes that the man may have done terrible things on his rise to the top—but he also may have had good reason to. With no clear answers, what Spenser discovers will cause him to question his own views on morality—and place him in grave danger.

Book Review: How to Be Multiple

Wait, are you you or the other one? Which is the evil twin? Have you ever switched partners? Can you read each other's mind? Twins get asked the weirdest questions by strangers, loved ones, even themselves. For Helena de Bres, a twin and philosophy professor, these questions are closely tied to some of philosophy's most unnerving unknowns. What makes someone themself rather than someone else? Can one person be housed in two bodies? What does perfect love look like? Can we really act freely? At what point does wonder morph into objectification?

Accompanied by her twin Julia's drawings, Helena uses twinhood to rethink the limits of personhood, consciousness, love, freedom, and justice. With her inimitably candid, wry voice, she explores the long tradition of twin representations in art, myth, and popular culture; twins' peculiar social standing; and what it's really like to be one of two. With insight, hope, and humor, she argues that our reactions to twins reveal our broader desires and fears about selfhood, fate, and human connection, and that reflecting on twinhood can help each of us-twins and singletons alike-recognize our own multiplicity, and approach life with greater curiosity, imagination, and courage.

Book Review: Disney Twisted-Wonderland volume 2

Stranded in the world of Twisted Wonderland, Yu must brave a magical school filled with ghosts, monsters, and uncooperative students!

Yu is formally enrolled in Night Raven College. He’s even a prefect…of Ramshackle Dorm. But that doesn’t mean things are getting any easier for him. When his classmate Ace shows up on his doorstep after getting in trouble, Yu faces his biggest challenge yet!

Book Review: Comedy Book

Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture—as trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities—yet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force.

In Comedy Book, Jesse David Fox—a definitive voice in comedy criticism and someone who, in his own words, “enjoys comedy maybe more than anyone on this planet"—tackles everything you need to know about comedy. Weaving together history and analysis, Fox unravels the genre’s political legacy through an ode to Jon Stewart, interrogates the divide between highbrow and lowbrow via Adam Sandler, and unpacks how marginalized comics create spaces for their communities. Along the way, Fox covers everything from comedy in the age of political correctness and Will Smith’s slap to the right wing’s relationship with comedy and, for Fox, comedy’s ability to heal personal tragedy.

Book Review: 60 Songs That Explain the '90s

The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 Songs That Explain The '90s, Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.

60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla hits shelves November 14, 2023. Twelve Books provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: World Within a Song

What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs?

After two New York Times bestsellers that cemented and expanded his legacy as one of America’s best-loved performers and songwriters, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) and How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy is back with another disarming, beautiful, and inspirational book about why we listen to music, why we love songs, and how music can connect us to each other and to ourselves. Featuring fifty songs that have both changed Jeff’s life and influenced his music—including songs by the Replacements, Mavis Staples, the Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Dolly Parton, and Billie Eilish—as well as Jeff’s “Rememories,” dream-like short pieces that related key moments from Jeff’s life, this book is a mix of the musical, the emotional, and the inspirational in the best possible way.

Book Review: Three Rocks

From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller - The Man Who Created Nancy This is more than the story of an iconic comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve.

Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics.

Three Rocks was published August 29, 2023, from Abrams Books.

Book Review: Doctor Who Psychology (2nd Edition)

How does an immortal deal with death? What can an ancient Time Lord teach us about real human nature? Why does the Doctor say he and Freud “got on very well”? How do the Daleks and Cybermen reflect concerns about losing our humanity? And what new challenges loom ahead when the Doctor regenerates as a woman?

Hailed as the “most successful sci-fi series ever made” (Guinness World Records), Doctor Who has been a cult-classic for more than half a century. And though time may not be the boss—Rule 408—as times change, so too do social norms and psychological challenges, which have paved the way for a new kind of Doctor who can appeal to the modern viewer.

Book Review: Hunt. Kill. Repeat. Volume 1

It’s Kill Bill meets Clash of the Titans in Hunt. Kill. Repeat., the action packed series by Mark London (Battlecats, Knights of the Golden Sun).

When the Greek gods invade Earth, society is quickly forced to comply with their new rulers. However, one god, Artemis, rejects her brethren’s ideology and has found solace in the love of a mortal. When she is called to Olympus to answer for her betrayal, the gods strip away her godly powers and leave her for dead. Now, ten years later, Artemis is on a quest for revenge to confront her father, Zeus, for taking away everything she ever loved.

Book Review: Captain Marvel - Shadow Code

Tony Stark wants Carol to keep an eye on brilliant grad student Mara Melamed, who is struggling to find her feet at Empire State University. Although reluctant at first, Carol meets Mara and is soon impressed by the young woman.

But trouble quickly finds Captain Marvel in the form of a controversial operating system from DigiTech—whose mysterious CEO only appears as a hologram. To make matters worse, one of Carol’s closest friends has been framed for murder. And Mara Melamed is at the tangled center of it all.

Carol is driven to her darkest edge as she questions her identity and sense of belonging in the world. With her allies at her side, Carol must face her self-doubt and protect the world from impending doom.