Category: Micro-Reviews

The first novel by the L.A. barfly who became one of America’s most prolific poets. Few writers are more imitated, and few books are funnier and faster from start to finish. Politically correct readers need not peruse. Bukowski delights in offending the offendable (and goes …

In the sequel to The Shining, little Danny Torrance is all grown up and trying to stay off the bottle. He still has the shining, as does twelve-year-old Abra, who’s being targeted by vampiric immortals who want to suck out her magical essence and stash …

This slim volume has two parts: a memoir on King’s early years and a how-to section for aspiring authors. The former is pure enjoyment—King at his conversational best—while the latter is an entertaining read but thin on advice. There are better how-to books out there, …

Any review of Thompson’s work is morally obliged to linger over the phrase “gonzo journalism,” but this book is so much more than that. Underneath the coke and blotter acid, away from the mad dash around the desert, is a mini-treatise on the “brutish reality …

This is more of a eulogy than a review. I went to see LeCarre give a talk at the University of Warsaw in the early 1990s. He had recently stopped feuding with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, and he had a reputation as a …

The true story of Mokhtar Alkhanshalia, a young Yemeni-American who works as a doorman in San Francisco but dreams of bigger things. Mokhtar sets off for his ancestral homeland to revive the coffee-making traditions of the past. This may not seem wise when Yemen is …

The sequel to the 1988 novel that became the famous Robert Altman film. Studio exec Griffin Mill is back, and he’s still Gordon Gekko with an introspective streak. For him, greed is not only good; it’s the yardstick by which all good things are measured. …

A young woman loses her home. An Iranian immigrant buys the place for a song. She wants it back. He wants to restore his dignity and provide for his family. These people are hanging on to the last thread of the American dream. It might …

The movie is brilliant. The novel on which it’s based is even better. First published in 1971, this horror masterpiece ages well despite its melodramatic flourishes. While the premise—a demon takes up residence in an 11-year-old girl’s body—might make some discerning readers roll their eyes, …

If you believe the human being is a fundamentally good and moral creature, then this true story might be one of the hardest things you can read: a stark view of humankind’s special ability to both inflict evil and ignore it. As a courier for …