5 Questions With Novelist Benjamin Whitmer

Pike, by Benjamin Whitmer, which will be discussed by The Hard Word Book Club on Wednesday, March 30, 7pm With its working class misfits with dark pasts fighting darker corruption, Benjamin Whitmer’s new mystery Pike is quite possibly the purist definition of modern hard boiled fiction. His title hero has a hard past, mainly of [...]

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Review: Hard Ground by Tom Waits & Michael O’Brien

I picked my 6 year old son, Harry, up from school today and we went back to the house and spent time together lying side by side on the living room floor, looking at the photographs in Hard Ground. Neither of us said much; I would occasionally comment on the sadness in someone’s eyes and [...]

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As the Book World Turns

We’re seven days older and so is the book world.  Here’s what went on this week: After thirteen months of consideration, Judge Danny Chin rejected the Google settlement (NYT) calling Google’s proposed deal for putting millions of books online, “not fair, adequate and reasonable.”  Publisher’s Weekly also had a good run down of the whole [...]

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Review: Live Wire by Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben gave his hard boiled action series character, Myron Bolitar, the most unlikely profession: sports agent. That said, if you’re one of his athletic clients and in trouble, Myron and his MB Associates employees, along with his rich, psychopath friend Win, will do all they can to bail you out. Coben’s books featuring Myron [...]

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Three Months in France with the Voyage Out Book Club

Sometimes the best books to talk about aren’t the best books to read. The Voyage Out Book Group just finished a three-month journey through French Literature. We began with J.M.G. Le Clezio’s first novel The Interrogation, moved onto Marguerite Duras’s The Ravishing of Lol Stein, and wrapped things up with Jean Cocteau’s The Holy Terrors. [...]

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As the Book World Turns….

Here’s all the week’s book news that’s fit to repeat, in no particular order: Large retailers are now pushing Amazon to pay state sales tax in places like Texas and California where the online retailer has vehemently refused. In Texas, Republican State Comptroller Susan Combs believes this would account for $269 million. Here’s a fun [...]

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Review: Ian Rankin’s ‘The Complaints’

  Ian Rankin is a master at creating characters. His law enforcement heroes are men we learn to accept despite their shortcomings. They brood through Edinburgh never truly understood by their colleagues and loved ones, and even when they catch the bad guy, true justice (like their peace of mind) is an elusive thing. And [...]

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Our Evening with Téa Obreht

The amazing (and delicious) The Tiger’s Wife cover cake created by Austin’s own Blue Note Bakery. “This is an old soul who just picked up from a former life as a writer.” – Cyndi Hughes of the Writers’ League of Texas describing Téa Obreht When a new book is the focus of as much attention [...]

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I Am the Walrus and YOU May Be a Winner

It’s give away time and in honor of SXSW, today’s prize hinges on your knowledge of music trivia. Here’s the question: In what literary work did John Lennon find the inspiration for his song I Am the Walrus, recorded for the Beatles’ 1967 Magical Mystery Tour album? The first person who posts the correct answer [...]

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Our Favorite Music Books (Wristbands Not Required)

Someone (Frank Zappa, perhaps?) said that reading about music is like killing for peace. We, the humble proprietors of BookPeople’s music book club This Could Be Your Life, beg to differ. We find that reading about what Bowie was really up to when he recorded Station To Station or about Hank’s fateful last ride only [...]

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