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Best of Portland 2009

Books

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Bytes of knowledge

Getting the most from an online education
Once upon a time, we thought it was novel to be able to buy books in our bathrobes.
By CLEA SIMON  |  April 29, 2009
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Review: World's Greatest Dad

You've read the mug — now see the movie!
Robin Williams is Will Hunting good in Bobcat Goldthwait's dark comedy about a failed novelist whose fantasy of becoming a literary lion comes true in a way that's just plain wrong.
By BETSY SHERMAN  |  April 15, 2009
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A cut above

The Books, live at the ICA, April 10, 2009
From out of blearily luminous pools of spiraling orange fractals, the disembodied head of a stately-looking man emerged, coaxing us to attention with little more than his calming gaze and an invitation to “a new beginning.”
By MICHAEL BRODEUR  |  April 14, 2009
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Meant to be

The Books leave (almost) nothing to chance
The Books are, more and more, making their work something you can see.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR  |  April 07, 2009
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Review: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

A stunted coming-of-age story
Curtis Hanson's 2000 adaptation of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys remained true to the writer's chimerical whimsy without getting cute. Not so Rawson Marshall Thurber's trashing of Chabon's first novel
By PETER KEOUGH  |  April 07, 2009
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Brain strain

Jonah Lehrer on neurological warfare and picking a cereal
Those of us aching for a 300-page treatise about the crippling implications of the "build your own scramble" at Local 188 won't, at first glance, find a great deal of solace in Jonah Lehrer's second book, How We Decide.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY  |  April 08, 2009
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Restoring a master

A new biography seeks to redefine Marc Chagall's place in art history
When Marc Chagall died in 1985 at the age of 98 he was internationally famous, wealthy, and had lived to see a museum built for him by the French government.
By KEN GREENLEAF  |  March 30, 2009
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New books on the shelves

Hoopleville
New books on the shelves
By DAVID KISH  |  March 18, 2009
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Mixed book bag

Reads to thaw out with
It looks like a good season run-up to beach reads, with new fiction from Denis Johnson and Aleksandar Hemon, biographies of Gabriel García Márquez and Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Updike's final collection of poetry.
By BARBARA HOFFERT  |  March 16, 2009
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Everything is illuminated

Samantha Hunt weaves historical fiction from Nikola Tesla's biography
A solemn pigeon, a rolling thunderstorm, flecks of dust: nearly everything speaks in The Invention of Everything Else , Samantha Hunt's second novel.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY  |  March 11, 2009
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Interview: Alan Moore, author of Watchmen

From the Boston Phoenix archives: the watchmaker speaks.
The winner of several "Best Comics Writer" awards on both sides of the Atlantic, he's best known in America as the author of the DC Comics series Swamp Thing and, of course, Watchmen.
By M. HOWELL  |  March 05, 2009
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Censorship for Me, Penelope

Girl, Interrupted
Lisa Jahn-Clough's young-adult novel Me, Penelope is the subject of a recent dispute at Tavares Middle School in Orlando, Florida.
By ALEX IRVINE  |  March 04, 2009
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A long-silent civil-rights heroine comes to Maine

Changing history
It's a writer's dream — to stumble across a story, a figure, or a moment in time, that influenced our history but remains relatively untouched by the hands of academia or pop culture.
By DEIRDRE FULTON  |  February 19, 2009
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Interview: Eugene Mirman

Slow learner
Much like the stand-up that has made him an alt-comedy mainstay, Eugene Mirman's first book, The Will to Whatevs (Harper Perennial), is a freewheeling mix of bemused ironies and trenchantly silly non-sequiturs.
By ROB TURBOVSKY  |  February 17, 2009

Changing the face of art

Letters to the Boston editor, February 13, 2009
Why are artists getting the shaft?
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS  |  February 11, 2009
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Maine creators at the New York Comic-Con

Dispatch from Comictopia
If you've never attended a large comics convention, it's difficult to get a sense of the enormity and nonstop sensory onslaught.
By ALEX IRVINE  |  February 11, 2009

Matching up writers and agents

You had me at 'hello'
At the Eastland Park Hotel on February 2, a dozen literary agents and publishers from Maine, Boston, and New York heard pitches from 75 aspiring writers on topics ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder to the history of the steamship.
By ALEX IRVINE  |  February 11, 2009
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Review: The Class

Learning curve, part II
Bégaudeau is a real-life teacher who penned a memoir, Entre les murs (the film’s original French title), about his time in the classroom.
By GERALD PEARY  |  February 04, 2009
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The parent trap

Coraline pushes familiar buttons
Coraline pushes familiar buttons
By PETER KEOUGH  |  February 06, 2009
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Robert Crumb at MassArt

In Crumb's world, everything appears tantalizingly available, all options are on the table, all bets are off.
R. Crumb's Underground at MassArt
By GREG COOK  |  February 06, 2009
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Water Dogs

Lewis Robinson's first novel picks up where Officer Friendly left off
A sort-of mystery novel that may or may not involve a crime, Water Dogs is also the story of a family broken by the death of its patriarch, "Coach," whose three children (fail to) cope with his death in highly individualized and complicated ways.
By ALEX IRVINE  |  January 28, 2009
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Short and bitter words of love

Six Little Words
People sum up grand concepts, thoughts, and plans in six words or fewer every day — in Facebook status updates, text messages, text-message novels , iPhone or Blackberry e-mails, Twitter posts, or analog Post-Its.
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN  |  February 02, 2009
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Review: Lark and Termite

Total immersion
"Language Immersion" is the name of a program set up by the US Army in Korea just prior to the North's invasion of the South.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 29, 2009
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Spilling family secrets

Speaking Up
Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian author Azar Nafisi began making a list in her diary.
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN  |  January 21, 2009
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Anita Silvey

Women warriors
In her near-40-years working in the field of children's literature, Boston-area resident Anita Silvey has been everything from a publisher, to an editor, an author, a lecturer, a reviewer, and even a professor.
By IAN SANDS  |  January 22, 2009

All a-Twitter

Seven microblogging books worth scrolling upward for
Seven microblogging books worth scrolling upward for
By MIKE MILIARD  |  January 14, 2009
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Congress bans kids from libraries?

New safety law may prohibit children under 12 from libraries – or make many books illegal
Is it possible that Congress has just inadvertently turned millions of children’s books into contraband?
By LISSA HARRIS  |  January 09, 2009
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Exploring deep within

Animal instinct
Hannah Holmes, the Maine-born, Portland-dwelling science writer, naturalist, and friend to all animals has turned her lens deeply inward in her latest book, The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself .
By JEFF INGLIS  |  January 07, 2009
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Joan Didion on stage, Spalding Gray on the page

Grief watch
The 90-minute theater piece differs from the memoir in ways other than its relative slimness. It's more of a linear journey.
By CAROLYN CLAY  |  January 07, 2009
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More sex, more Lincoln

A hefty reading season, from Jayne Anne Phillips and T.C. Boyle to Pablo Neruda
The subject of Lincoln is like catnip to publishers (and readers), but the only things missing from our winter list are actual cat books.
By BARBARA HOFFERT  |  December 30, 2008

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