Every time I crack the cover of this prodigious tome I inevitably at some point, either under my breath or barking it aloud (to the consternation of my fellow MUNI passengers) utter the phrase goddamn Hitchens and then close the book on my finger and shake my head, marveling once again at the stupendous breadth of knowledge and erudition contained herein. I read somewhere that Hitchens’ conversation at cocktail parties is a kind of volcanic piece of performance art, which is how I picture the great man in my head. Whether you agree with him or not (and I find I usually do) his ideas are always carefully considered, vigorously delivered and beautifully digressive. Throat cancer is taking down one of our finest national treasures but like everything else he’s faced in his fascinating life, he’s handling that too, head-on and with aplomb.

If you’re one of those folks who likes a heroic protagonist, sympathetic characters or intelligent and thoughtful personalities— if you are one of those readers who savors the quiet moments of rumination and the carefully wrought understated turn-of-phrase, then slap this back down on the pile and keep on movin’ cause this smutty little masterpiece is not for you! If on the other hand you can appreciate a colorful cast of cretins, morons, pretentious popinjays, vacuous conversationalists, Nazi sympathizers, drunks, bullies, extortionists, and a host of other lowlifes, miscreants and ne’er-do-wells, then slow down a tick and have gander at Beauman’s excellent debut. Despite the noxious characters the prose sparkles with intelligence & rollicks along to fairly jaw-dropping conclusion. Big Fun!!

Every bit as compelling as The Corrections, Freedom is vintage Franzen: the super-smart crackling dialogue, the epic exploration of how the world works by way of intense scrutiny of the familial microcosm—you remember, that way he has of evoking the most painfully awkward but startlingly familiar ways in which families are truly ugly, and horrible, and sad, and hilarious and just so, inescapably, tragically, necessary?—yeah, all that is still here, only. . . there’s more here, too. Remember when James Wood called Franzen a Hysterical Realist and implored him to “tell us how people feel”, and you remember that NYT’s piece about the disappearance of sex from the contemporary American male novelist’s oeuvre, well, I think our friend was listening and, well, take that, you critics & cynics!!

Prue McKeel’s brother has just been abducted, on her watch, and by, of all things, a murder of crows. This seems as strange and unbelievable to her as it does to you or I, but as she watches her brother carried through the sky towards the Impassable Wilderness, a magical realm just north of Portland Oregon, a place no one has ever been to and returned to tell the tale, she knows she is in serious trouble. Refusing to return home empty handed she sets off on her bicycle to find him and along the way reluctantly allows a schoolmate, Curtis, to tagalong. When the two are almost immediately separated, a dual narrative unfurls conjuring the work of C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. Paired with gorgeous art, this is the first in a series that has all the hallmarks of a modern classic.

Rachman’s debut novel follows the lives of the employees at an international English speaking newspaper in Rome. Each chapter takes a different character as its focus but the secondary characters introduced along the periphery each get their own treatment in subsequent chapters. Spliced between these character treatments are excerpts from the paper itself, a somewhat complicated structure that might be too clever for its own good in the hands of a less talented writer. Rachman proves more than up to the task as each chapter could easily stand on its own as an accomplished short story yet the concluding sum reveals a writer of great skill and vision. It’s an audacious debut that feels like the work of a veteran writer.

Let me just begin by stating that I have zero interest in American football. None. Nil. Zilch. I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials and I don't think I've ever sat through the entire thing. I don't know the rules, the players, strategies, histories: I cannot tell you which colleges have important football teams and I don't know which mascots go with which pro teams.

So why the hell would I read a novel about football? Two words friends: Don LeLillo. This novel served as the inspiration for David Foster Wallace's Eschaton game in Infinite Jest and there are a number of cool connections between the two books. Written in 1972, DeLillo was way ahead of his time here; it's like Dr. Strangelove meets Friday Night Lights. It makes me want to catch a game...

Ha ha! No terning back now my friend! Penguin Books (such a silly looking bird) stopped publishing The Book of Terns some years ago but Ternaround Press has terned things . . . wait, too obvious right, I can do better, has terned out a, wait, has terned up the heat on the, no that’s just stupid . . . how about, much to the consternation of it’s detractors, The Book Of Terns has reterned! Think I’m a moron do you? Spend five minutes with this book and you’ll be doodling and muttering to yourself in no time.

The first volume of the web-comic sensation is finally available in print. Malachai (age 5) writes the stories and his brother Ethan (age 29) illustrates them. The hilarious and super-awesome result is Axe Cop, perhaps the greatest superhero the world has ever known. After finding the perfect fireman's axe, Axe Cop holds tryouts for his new crime fighting team: there's Flute Cop (who carries a flute), Dinosaur Soldier (self-explanatory), Sockarang (with his boomerang sock arms), Uni-baby (part baby, part unicorn, of course), and my personal favorite, Wexler (a winged pet T-Rex with machine gun arms), et al. Zombies and witches and aliens and bad guys just don't stand a chance. Also included is the brilliant "Ask Axe Cop" columns, where fans get answers to some of our most pressing questions, like: "Have you ever fought in a go-kart?" and "What would you do about the bad guys who stole the sun?" The surreal logic of Axe Cop will have you wishing you had the coolest older brother in the world with the power to bring your dreams to vivid, brilliant life.