Books

The poetry of women will grow on you in Salena Wiener’s debut chapbook bodies like gardens

In her titular poem bodies like gardens, which opens the chapbook, Montreal poet Salena Wiener shows us how gardens are fertile ground for capturing the unique experience of being a woman. I feel weeds push my back, grasp my hips pull me under I gasp for breath but cough up mud The beautiful, evocative, sometimes […]

Books

Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly by Jake Brennan (Grand Central Publishing, $35)

“Rock stars aren’t like you and me. They act insane and have insane things happen to them. They are more like feral, narcissistic animals than functioning members of society, and this is in part what makes them entertaining.” -Jake Brennan (from Disgraceland) “…on my tombstone when I go/Just put ‘Death by Rock and Roll’…” Thus […]

Books

Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld (Hachette Books, $37)

“Somehow, I’ve managed to live an unusual and amazing life. Was it in spite of or because of what follows?” -Barry Sonnenfeld (from Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, page xvii) Back before COVID-19 when people still got excited about new theatrical releases, the movie industry would invariably parade a film’s star around for a promotional […]

Books

The Ox: The Authorized Biography of The Who’s John Entwistle by Paul Rees (Hachette, $38)

“Entwistle’s contemporary and fellow bassist, the former Rolling Stone, Bill Wyman, once dubbed him ‘the Jimi Hendrix of the bass guitar’. This was meant as the highest compliment but, with it, Wyman also inadvertently conjured the very demon that would haunt Entwistle throughout his professional life. Indisputably, he was a virtuoso musician, easily the most […]

Books

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart (ECW Press, $22.95)

“Parking my motorcycle in front of a motel at the end of a long day on the road could certainly be sweet, like finally exhaling after holding my breath all day, but best of all was setting out in the morning. Whatever torments the night had brought; whatever weather the new day threw at me, […]

Books featured

Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia

“The real history of music is not respectable. Far from it. Neither is it boring. Breakthroughs almost always come from provocateurs and insurgents, and they don’t just change the songs we sing, but often shake up the foundations of society. When something genuinely new and different arrives on the music scene, those in positions of […]

Books

Rush: Song by Song by Alex E. Body (Fonthill Media, $36.95)

“Even from their earliest days, the band developed and changed constantly, losing and gaining fans along the way – but famously retaining their integrity – always moving in the direction that they chose.”                                                                                           -Alex E. Body (from Rush: Song by Song, page 2)                If there was a research poll conducted to […]