'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings.
Chan Marshall has one of the most haunting, wrenching voices of any current singer, male or female.
I've always had rock star envy. Unfortunately, writing is a pedestrian, tame occupation done while sitting in coffee-stained pajamas in front of a computer rather than prowling around a huge stage in sweaty leather pants, so I have to get my kicks vicariously.
Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.
I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies.
The phrase 'blue plate special' has always been one of the homiest, coziest, most sweetly nostalgic phrases in the English language for me.
