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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Kevin McDonald: Superstar (with Dave Hill opening) (PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA, August 27, 2025)

Posted in Dave Hill, John Wlaysewski, Kevin McDonald, Philadelphia, PA, PhilaMOCA, Robin Rothman, Scott Thompson, The Kids in the Hall on August 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: August 27, 2025] Kevin McDonald: Superstar

I saw Kevin McDonald do a bit of storytelling last year.  In this very venue.

This year he was back again, this time bringing his musical Kevin McDonald: Superstar to the MOCA.

I didn’t really know what to expect.  I had read that it was a musical, but what does that mean?  Well, when the show started, Kevin and guitarist John Wlaysewski came up on stage and play 2 songs that Kevin wrote.  One was all about grass (not that kind of grass, backyard grass).  Then he told a long story about Johnny Rotten and an AIDS test (which he told in a slightly different style last year but which was still very funny).  And then another song “Just Keep Dancing.”

Then Dave Hill came out on stage.  I hadn’t heard of Dave, but he is apparently quite well known (well known enough to play a ripping guitar solo version of the Canadian and American national anthems before a hockey game (easily found om YouTube).  Dave is also a comedian.  He came up on stage and played a hilariously self-deprecating character (who was secretly loving all of the fame).

He told a few stories and then played some songs.  Even though he is a massively talented guitarist, his songs were hilarious.  He played Danzig’s Mother by getting the sound just right on his guitar, singing the word Mother and the first line and then mumbling his way through to the next time he screamed Mother (just like everyone else who has no idea what the words are).  When he took requests, someone (of course) shouted Freebird (gag), and he said, ok you asked for it I’m playing the whole thing.  He played 30 seconds of the intro and said, there you get the picture.  After a very long song/story about being a part of the biggest meat heist ever, he stayed up on staged and introduced the players for the evening.

It was John and Dave on guitars, Joe Moore as the narrator and Robin Rothman as a few characters (she has an amazing voice). (more…)

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Demetri Martin: The Quick Draw Tour (Wellmont Theater, Montclair, NJ, June 20, 2025)

Posted in Demetri Martin, Montclair, NJ, Wellmont Theater on June 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 20, 2025] Demetri Martin

I realized recently that when I think of comedians that I want to see, nearly all of them are British (or from Australia or New Zealand).  This is the Taskmaster effect.  In fact w saw English comedian Sarah Millican just two days before this.

There really aren’t that many American comedians who I want to see.  But Demetri Martin is one of them.

I love his deadpan style and the fact that he includes drawings (and songs) in his act.

He has played the Wellmont before (we couldn’t go in 2022) so I was happy he came back.

The premise of this show was that he wouldn’t have the drawings prepared ahead of time as he usually does.  Rather, he would draw them and talk about them while he drew (and drew quickly, you see).

There were so many drawings and jokes, it’s impossible to remember most of them because we were laughing so hard.  It’s also foolish to try to describe the drawings because they are quick, funny sketches.

There was one bit of improv that we enjoyed quite a lot.  He made a joke about Taylor Ham and it turned into a Taylor Ham vs Pork Roll argument that he wasn’t prepared for (If you’re going to bring up pork roll, be sure you have material about it!). (more…)

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Günter Grass–The Living Statue: a Legend (2022) [translated 2024]

Posted in Fantasy, Günther Grass, Michael Hofmann, Novella, Romance, Statues, Translation, Translators on February 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: .

[READ: February 22, 2025] The Living Statue

This book came as part of my New Directions subscription.  It’s a “newly discovered” story written by Günter Grass in 2003.  It’s very short.  57 pages with big margins.

This story sees Grass (or a fictional substitute) travelling around to give book talks.  On a trip before the Berlin Wall fell, he and his wife went to Naumberg.  They visited a chapel which featured “life-size” statues.  But everyone on the trip is disappointed at how small they actually are.  One of the statues is of Uta of Naumberg [click for  the Wikipedia explanation of who she was].

The repeated phrase in the book is “you can do anything on paper.”  And so, he invites the 12 statues to lunch. It’s a jolly time with these ancient statues not really grasping modern behavior (they all hate the potatoes).  He was quite taken with Uta.  She ordered a Coke and then said she had to go.

He ran into her again after the Wall fell,  She was being a living statue outside of Cologne Cathedral.  She was very convincing, standing still and doing nothing.  He approached her and got very close whereupon he whispered to her that she should take a break and get a Coke with him.  She did not break character at all. But her manager/boyfriend came up and told him to get lost.

He saw her again some time later and wanted to approach, but the manager/boyfriend was staring. (more…)

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Solvej Balle–One the Calculation of Volume I (2020) [translated 2024]

Posted in Barbara Haveland, Bookstores, Collecting, Groundhog Day, Regrets, Solvej Balle, Translation, Translators on February 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: .

[READ: February 21, 2025] One the Calculation of Volume I

I received this book as part of New Directions “membership” where they sent me a new book each month for a year.  I had never heard of Solvej Balle, who is a Danish author.  This might be her first book translated into English.  Barbara Haveland did the translation.  I was certain I had read something else she had translated, but I guess not.  Her phrasing is excellent and made this book an easy, enjoyable read.

This book is part of a seven-volume set (this book was only 161 pages) and given the scope of this volume, I’m unclear what might happen in the others–maybe they’re entirely unrelated?  Turns out that Book 2 is already out, although 3 and 4 are coming out in the fall of next year.  And I just checked, book 2 continues the story.

And the story is this.

Tara Selter went to a conference on November 18th.  She went to bed and when she woke up, it was November 18th again.

Yup, it’s Groundhog Day, the movie.  But it’s not that at all, because Tara does not find it funny.  Also, and I don’t think this is a spoiler, she does not try to kill herself (like in the movie) only to find that she comes back.

The book starts on day #121 of her repeated November 18ths.

She returned from the conference and her husband wondered why she was back so soon.  She explained everything and (fortunately for the book) he believes her.  They go through the whole day, wondering what happened and what to do about it.  And when she woke up the next day, the world had reset to November 18th, but she continued.  I really appreciated the way Tara had a burn on her hand and we see it heal as the days move on. (more…)

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Dan Santat–The Aquanaut (2022)

Posted in Animals, Dan Santat, Death, Graphic Novel, Huh?, Ocean on February 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

 SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: February 2, 2025] The Aquanaut

I like Dan Santat (his instagram is fun) and I like his drawing style.  I’ve read a lot of books that he has illustrated but I don’t know that I’ve read all that many books written by him.

This book was pretty weird, but the story was a lot of fun.

The story opens with a man getting killed at sea (yea, pretty shocking).  The man turns out to be the father of the main character, Sophia.

Sophia’s father and her uncle had created a marine theme park called Aqualand.  They were scientists and they wanted to bring the world of the sea to everyone.  But there’s not a lot of money in that so investors kept insisting that they add more excitement to Aqualand.  And soon it was a far cry from what they’d envisioned.

But then one day, an Aquanaut walks out of the sea.  The aquanaut is in a diving suit–the one that her father had used!–It causes quite a stir, obviously, but it has one goal: to find Aqualand.  It’s especially funny when you realize that the suit is being “driven” by three sea creatures.

I enjoyed the story well enough but it did leave a lot of questions, mostly to do with the plot.  There’s no real explanation or even introduction to the sea creatures. And after reading the afterword where Santat talks about how personal the story was to him, I wanted to like it more.  But instead I mostly enjoyed the illustrations and the overall environmental themes and vibe of the book.

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Ben Oliver–The Kill Factor (2022)

Posted in Ben Oliver, Death, Ocean, Violence on February 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

 SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: February 8, 2025] The Kill Factor

My daughter brought this book home and encouraged me to read it.  She said it was pretty dark and was kind of like the Hunger Games.

So I read it and I was immediately struck by how dark the book was.  And then by how violent it was!  This book (for teens) does not shy away from death–and violent deaths at that.

We open on a girl named Emerson.  She has been arrested for arson and murder.  She had robbed a school but didn’t know anyone was in the building when it caught fire.  She also doesn’t believe she set the fire, but she may just be blocking out reality.

The world they live in is a few years ahead of ours (but no all that far, it seems).  The currency that people use is followers on social media (no specific media is mentioned).  The popular people have it all–fancy houses, medical attention, schooling.  The unpopular live underground (literally under the Topsiders) and are unlikely to be able to go to college.

Emerson’s younger brother is deaf and when he needed medical attention immediately, the ambulance said they wouldn’t drive below the Topsider dividing line.  She had to carry her sickly brother a pretty long way to reach a street where the ambulance would go.  The kids’ father is so obsessed with getting viewers that he neglect them and everything else while trying to make his videos.

Since they had nothing, Emerson resorted to stealing.  But she got caught.  And she is certain to go to prison.

Until a producer shows up and offers her a chance to go on a new reality show called Redemption Island.  50 young people would be on the island, doing contests.  The most popular ones at the end of the day would continue.  The least popular would be imprisoned for life.  At the end of the show, 49 people would be in jail for life and the last would go free. Emerson thinks this is nuts but her father has already signed off on the deal (she is bitter about that).  But when her brother thinks she should do it–she should earn enough credits for them to get a lot (and for her brother to go to college) and there’s no way a game show can imprison people for life.

She agrees and boards a cruise liner with 49 other kids.  They are branded with a number (and an unpleasant surprise).  And soon enough they learn the truth.  The punishment for losing isn’t life in prison.  It is death.  As in, the completions will kill you.

For instance, the first one finds all fifty kids buried alive.  Those who can’t make it out don’t make it out.

Emerson has bonded with a few like-minded kids and we learn a lot about each of them and what they did to get there–although here are a few people whom we never do learn their infractions, now that I think about it.

Every night the contestants have to film a video diary to try to earn more followers.  And the pretty Topsiders are way way way ahead.

The story was a pretty intense and hard to put down.  It did get a little samey what with the format of the show and the relentlessness of the activities.  There’s a couple of times when people rebel against the producer, which is excellent for disrupting the formula. And, as I said, the story is brutal–it is pretty explicit about people hurting themselves to earn viewers and about how violently they died (there’s no way Emerson is getting reunited with everyone at the end of the “show”).

And unlike many other stories, some of the characters we like are killed too–I mean, literally no one is safe, which makes the terror all the more real.

The ending–the last 100 or so pages just flew by.  In fact, the ending may have been too fast.

And one gripe is a potential hint at a sequel (but don’t worry the book does END).  I’d be curious to see what a sequel might entail–there are so many questions.  But I could also see Oliver not writing one.

I haven’t read a book like this is a while and it was quite exciting.

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Robin Sloan–Moonbound (2012)

Posted in Beavers, Robin Sloan, Robots, Scholarship, Talking animals, Technology, The Future, The Moon, The White Stripes, Wizards on February 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 1, 2025] Moonbound

Back in 2012 I read Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and really loved it.

Then I pretty much forgot about him until this past year’s Advent Calendar collection of short stories.  He had a story “In the Stacks” that was about libraries and was touching and sweet, but also quite cool.  And I saw that he had written a new book, Moonbound.

My wife also heard about it and she checked out out, but I grabbed it first and started to read it.

And boy it just took me forever to get through it.  I don’t know what it was about this book (which has many many great reviews), but everything about the story felt really flat to me.  It felt really long (400 pages) and felt like there was no sense of urgency.

It was also set in the very distant future (13,000 years from now), when a [human?] species called the Anth were all but extinct .  One of the problems for me was that there was no really compelling explanation for the backstory. (more…)

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An evening with Neko Case (McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, January 29, 2025) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in A.M. Homes, McCarter Theatre, Neko Case, Princeton, NJ on January 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: January 29, 2025] An evening with Neko Case

I’ve been wanting to see Neko Case’s solo show for a while and when this show was announced–in Princeton!–I was psyched to grab a ticket.

Then I saw that it was for her book tour, and  that there would be no music, but rather an hour of conversation with Princeton University’s A.M. Homes, Author and Professor of the Practice in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing.

I love A.M. Homes’ work and would 100% love to hear her talk to someone I was really interested in.

But to be honest, I wasn’t interested in her memoir.  I don’t really like musician memoirs all that much (most of the time) and while this one might be interesting, the description

a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisible girl “raised by two dogs and a space heater” in rural Washington state to her improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent.

just doesn’t appeal to me.

I follow her on Instagram and feel like I know a bunch about her and I don’t know that I need to know more about her.

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Bruce McCullough: Takes of Bravery and Stupidity (City Winery Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, January 18, 2025)

Posted in Bruce McCullough, City Winery Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, The Kids in the Hall on January 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: January 18, 2025] Bruce McCullough

I went to City Winery last year to see Scott Thompson and said I’d never go back because it’s a pain in the ass to get to.  But then Bruce McCullough announced a show there and I relented.  It was also right around our anniversary so we made it a night of delicious food and dark comedy.

Now that I know about the Convention Center parking I’m less opposed to the area in general.  But we spent 30 minutes looking for a parking space as hundreds of people were walking around and driving around doing the same thing.  But we found the parking lot and managed to get to our seat about 30 minutes before the show.

We had duck tacos and rice balls and french fries and the food was really yummy.

Brucio came out just as we were finishing our food and he danced around while some music played and he started the show with a series of actual jokes.  They were dark and funny one-liners and then it settled into him telling some stories.  Never go up to a blind man with rippled chips and say “here, read this.”

There was a running joke that the last time he was in Pennsylvania, he was in Scranton (the meth and muffler capital of the state) and the reviewer panned the show and said it had a narrative that not even Frank Zappa could understand.  There’s no record of him having played Scranton, but the joke is great (and is exactly the kind of weird review someone in Scranton or the like would say).  The article also included a pie chart of The Kids in the Hall and Bruce was the dark purple one. (more…)

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Ally Carter–The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (2024) [audiobook 2024]

Posted in Ally Carter, Audiobooks, Funny (ha ha), Morality, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Romance, Saskia Maarleveld, Violence, Zachary Webber on December 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: December 2024] The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

This is probably the first romance book that I’ve listened to.  Technically it’s a romance mystery, but the format is pretty distinctively romance.

I can say that I really didn’t enjoy the more romancey parts of the book.  Not because of the romance, because heck, almost all books have a romance component.

But I found this romance to  be beating us over the head with the fact that a) Maggie HATES Ethan and b) Ethan is REALLY HOT.  Again, I’m fine with the romance angle and even these tow components of the romance, but jeez, how many times did Carter have to tell us these two things.

Every time she saw Ethan she pointed out his hot arms or his studly abs.  And every time she saw him she told us how much she hated him.

And, hey, Ally Carter, trust your reader that they can hold information for more than a few pages.

This may have seemed more obnoxious to be in an audio book format.  Saskia Maarleveld did a great job in both male and female voices.  But hearing some of those same phrases repeated over and over was annoying.  Zachary Webber did a good job as Ethan (towards the end of the book, Ethan starts getting his own POV), but I actually enjoyed Saskia’s voice more.

So a basic plot summary.  Mystery author Maggie Chase hates Ethan Wyatt, a fellow author at their publishing imprint. He’s good-looking, popular with literally everyone and the guy can NEVER get her name right. (more…)

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