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Brilliant friends: Great reads of 2012

You already know Chis Ware's Building Stories is the achievement of the decade (thanks, New York Times!), but some other people wrote some pretty great books this year too.

By: EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 17, 2012

Even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'

Style aside, the 1960s — the era that spawned sex, drugs, and rock and roll — are still with us.

By: PETER KADZIS | December 12, 2012

SLIDESHOW: The cheap near-thrills of Sexytime

With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | December 14, 2012

Marvel Comics’ untold story: Interview with Sean Howe

In Sean Howe’s masterful new book, hundreds of interviews with Marvel insiders yield an intriguing tale as gripping as any X-Men story arc.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | December 06, 2012

It's in the cards: Karen Engelmann's new book

Historical fiction is a perfect winter indulgence.

By: CLEA SIMON | December 03, 2012

Bipolar Babies: Leonard Cohen and Rod Stewart in misery and delight

GIFT GUIDE 2012
"Every night and every morn," wrote William Blake one afternoon in 1803, "some to misery are born."

By: JAMES PARKER | December 05, 2012

Musical literary stocking stuffers

GIFT GUIDE 2012
The choices for books by and about rock stars are almost endless this season. Here are a few.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | December 05, 2012

Matthew Guerrieri on duh duh duh DUM

In The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination (Knopf), Matthew Guerrieri, music critic for the Boston Globe , calls the iconic duh duh duh DUM opening "short enough to remember and portentous enough to be memorable."

By: DEBRA CASH | December 05, 2012

Animal Magnetism: Lauren Slater's collection of essays about ''non-human citizens''

Musashi and Lila, the title pooch of Lauren Slater's The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals (Beacon Press), have crossed the rainbow bridge.

By: CLEA SIMON | November 21, 2012

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Review: An Ian McEwan trifle

Sweet Tooth — a light, comic novel from Ian McEwan, tells the story of an intelligence agent in MI5 in the '70s.

By: LISA WEIDENFELD | November 14, 2012

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Errol Morris: The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth

August 29, 1979. Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Army Special Forces Captain, was convicted of the savage murders of his wife and two daughters as they slept in their house within Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

By: PETER KADZIS | November 09, 2012

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Review: Dylan Jones's 'Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music'

In the modern world of Wiki and the Interweb, if you're going to produce an actual print-edition dictionary of pop music, you'd better frontload it with attitude.

By: JON GARELICK | November 08, 2012

The other side of the McGovern legacy

George McGovern's death on October 21 has inspired remembrances of his status as a longtime liberal champion, but also his losing 1972 presidential campaign.

By: LISA WEIDENFELD | October 31, 2012

A fortunate event

This coming Saturday, author Daniel Handler, in the persona of his alter-ego Lemony Snicket, delivers the "Kids' Keynote" address at the Boston Book Festival.

By: STEPHIN MERRITT | October 26, 2012

Elsa at 75: The Cambridge photographer looks back

Elsa Dorfman, now 75, is the most unassuming of Cambridge literary/art-world legends.

By: JON GARELICK | October 24, 2012

The Joy of Smut

The porn here is explicit, character-driven, and polymorphically perverse.

By: S.I. ROSENBAUM | October 17, 2012

Talking to Sherman Alexie

The people who made Spokane Indian writer Sherman Alexie's semi-autobiographical The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the second-most censored book of 2010 didn't realize they were doing him a favor, he told us.

By: DEBRA CASH | October 09, 2012

Interview: Gina Gershon finds her pussy

Even before her traumatically hilarious performance in the trailer-park comedy of horrors Killer Joe , Gina Gershon has been an actor who fiercely commits.

By: ROB TURBOVSKY | October 12, 2012