Matthew Specktor Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Matthew Specktor

It is impossible to do justice to Marra’s smooth, sweeping style in bits — viewed in isolation, such descriptions could easily seem overwrought and clumsy — but knit together, these pieces have striking command and authority. This is a gorgeous book

Matthew Specktor

@ericafarglow Y’know what else is amazing? That book Michael Ondaatje did with Murch called The Conversations.

Matthew Specktor

@ericafarglow Last time I played "The Fanatic" I then had to listen to it six times a day for the better part of a month. These posts should come with a trigger warning.

Matthew Specktor

@aerumke There’s also DJ Waldie’s Holy Land, Susan Straight (any number of ways to go there but maybe In the Country of Women), @Urrealism (almost impossible to choose just one, but The House of Broken Angels is amazing)

Matthew Specktor

@mdbell79 @byron_queen I don't know how I would pick *a* favorite, but I always rep for Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling

Matthew Specktor

@jimwoster @JasonAChristian Jonathan Lethem’s book from the same series—about Carpenter’s “They Live”—is amazing

Matthew Specktor

@ClaireDederer @Andr6wMale Also once ejected an audiocassette of Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept then ran my car over it several times. The reader was awful.

Matthew Specktor

The tabloid-style death of a forgotten actor strikes one as rather narrow for a novelist of Mallon’s broad capabilities. But this quibble vanishes as the book commences and we are gulled, immediately, by its keen portrait of New York in 1980 [and] its effortless evocation of period.

Matthew Specktor

@joshtpm @JeffSharlet @KarinaLongworth I know! The legend of that movie's failure was enormous. (The book about it, Steven Bach's Final Cut, is great btw. Even if you think you're not interested enough to read a book about a movie you've never seen, it's an incredible narrative of art-vs-corporate capitalism)

Matthew Specktor

@aerumke There’s also DJ Waldie’s Holy Land, Susan Straight (any number of ways to go there but maybe In the Country of Women), @Urrealism (almost impossible to choose just one, but The House of Broken Angels is amazing)