Boris Kachka Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Boris Kachka

Salka Viertel's "The Kindness of Strangers," about an extraordinary life and also a historical moment when a Hollywood memoir could also be a story of exile and artistic resilience.

Boris Kachka

Loosely based on the case of the Grim Sleeper, the serial killer so named for taking a 14-year “nap” between killing sprees, Pochoda turns the focus entirely on the women — survivors, witnesses and, in her most compelling character, a petite, street-savvy detective, Essie.

Boris Kachka

Thomas McGrath's epic poem "Letter to an Imaginary Friend," 1962, which Philip Levin called “a book every American should be required to read before receiving a high school diploma.”

Boris Kachka

This is a great story, by @BerryFLW, about tenacity, love and beautiful writing. https://t.co/yLPtVXine7

Boris Kachka

Hirahara’s cozy-ish mysteries are a Trojan horse from which hidden histories come pouring out — in particular the long story of Japanese assimilation and alienation in the U.S.

Boris Kachka

Herzog’s first full-on memoir is a must-have for cineastes or anyone who appreciates well-told, highly digressive tales with perhaps a grain or two of untruth. Flitting from odd jobs to famously disastrous productions to notes on aesthetics, the only thing it’s short on are dull moments.

Boris Kachka

@DPD_ I prefer “James Patterson by James Patterson: The Stories of My Life,” by James Patterson

Boris Kachka

[A] magisterial survey of the Bronx, a long-neglected borough whose deep history is unacknowledged even by many of its champions... Over nearly 600 pages of tall tales, epic cookouts, and urban-planning nightmares, Frazier shows himself to be the kind of tour guide you’d follow anywhere.

Boris Kachka

I invariably advocate for Karunatilaka’s journey into underworlds: both a supernatural realm beyond death and the demimonde of violence and corruption that fueled the Sri Lankan civil war...My closing pitch to friends: I’ve rarely read a better ending.

Boris Kachka

Ellroy isn’t for everyone — but who is? ... “L.A. Confidential,” hits hardest among the novels in his L.A. Quartet, entwining three cops in a case that blows the lid open on the whole dirty town.