Interview: Further Joy
Further Joy by John Brandon Quirky, inventive characters populate John Brandon’s first short story collection, from a down-on-his-luck former high school football star to a little league player obsessed with entrepreneurship. Each of the 11 stories is a winner. Shelf Unbound: You’ve written three novels, and this is your first collection of short stories. What […]
Interview: Sour Heart
Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang The first publication from Lena Dunham’s Random House imprint Lenny, Sour Heart is a brilliant, moving portrayal of the struggles of Chinese girls coming of age in America. Shelf Unbound: Your young girl characters struggle with their families’, particularly their mothers’, expectations that they stay tightly connected to the family […]
Review: The Swim
The Swim: A NovelAbout Friendship and the Longest Swim in the World by Jens Colting Timid, 14-year-old Tiny undertakes a life-saving swim sparked by an unlikely friendship with Goliath. Bonding over their imperfections, they form a deep friendship, quickly becoming inseparable. Goliath, 12 years old, studious and clever, is wheelchair bound and his health is […]
Surfing With Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning
Surfing With Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning by Aaron James Author, Aaron James, begs to differ with Jean-Paul Sartre, who once declared waterskiing to be “the ideal limit of aquatic sports. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared “the ideal limit of aquatic sports . . . is waterskiing.” The avid […]
Tired of California: The Beach Boys’ Holland Revisited
Tired of California: The Beach Boys’ Holland Revisited by Marc Schuster Tired of California examines the efforts of the Beach Boys to reinvent themselves in the early 1970s as they recorded their critically acclaimed Holland album. The story of Holland is the story of a band trying to reinvent itself. Drawing on a wide range […]