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Our laurels went unrested on for this one: Issue 34 features new stories of shipwrecks and kidnappings and bad vacations by (among others) Anthony Doerr, Daniel Handler, and T. C. Boyle, new letters about wine and Hawaii from John Hodgman and Sarah Vowell, twenty-one dead-on self-portraits drawn by the likes of Michael Martone, Michel Gondry, and Sarah Silverman, and, beyond all this, in a standalone volume, Nick McDonell's stunning exploration of the latest iteration of the war in Iraq--a show more ground-level account from within the 1st Cavalry Division. The whole thing weighs in at just under 400 pages, and comes in its own custom-made double-sleeve. It is, without a doubt, a beaut. show lessTags
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Two paperbacks held together with a clever clear plastic cover. One contains the Letters section, the short fiction and a charming collection of self-portraits from famous actors, filmmakers and writers. The other volume is a book that McSweeney's publishes on it's own, "The End of Major Combat Operations" by reporter and novelist Nick McDonnell. It's a from-the-ground look at the state of the Iraqi War, some seven years after President George W. Bush announced the end of major operations there. Focusing mostly on the troops and Iraqi interpreters, it shows a side to the operation as it was winding down that is rarely portrayed in the media.
After their last production, it's not too much of a surprise that the good folks at McSweeney's went a little easier on Volume 34, which consists of two paperbound books united by a decorated plastic sleeve (image here). The first book includes nearly twenty pages of letters from the likes of John Hodgman and Sarah Vowell, eleven short stories, and nineteen self portraits (by, among others, Sarah Silverman, Jack Pendarvis, and Jonathan Lethem).
The stories were (mostly) good, and included a piece on Vietnamese-American journalism in New Orleans after Katrina; a T.C. Boyle tale of a shipwreck, and Tom Barbash's "Letters from the Academy," a one-sided correspondence from a very creepy tennis instructor.
"The End of Major Combat Operations" show more is the other volume included here. By reporter and author Nick McDonell, it's a 250+ page compilation of anecdotes and reporting from the ground in Iraq, covering everything from the dangerous lives of interpreters to the jargon deployed by American soldiers to the ad hoc modifications that had to be made to army vehicles so that they didn't continuously rip down Iraqi power lines. It's the sort of writing that doesn't show up in the conventional reports from the front, and kudos to McSweeney's for publishing it.
Another fine production from Eggers & Co.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-review-mcsweeneys-vol-34.html show less
The stories were (mostly) good, and included a piece on Vietnamese-American journalism in New Orleans after Katrina; a T.C. Boyle tale of a shipwreck, and Tom Barbash's "Letters from the Academy," a one-sided correspondence from a very creepy tennis instructor.
"The End of Major Combat Operations" show more is the other volume included here. By reporter and author Nick McDonell, it's a 250+ page compilation of anecdotes and reporting from the ground in Iraq, covering everything from the dangerous lives of interpreters to the jargon deployed by American soldiers to the ad hoc modifications that had to be made to army vehicles so that they didn't continuously rip down Iraqi power lines. It's the sort of writing that doesn't show up in the conventional reports from the front, and kudos to McSweeney's for publishing it.
Another fine production from Eggers & Co.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-review-mcsweeneys-vol-34.html show less
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Dave Eggers was born on March 12th, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. His family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois when he was a child. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, until his parents' deaths in 1991 and 1992. The loss left him responsible for his eight-year-old brother and later became the inspiration for his highly show more acclaimed memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". Published in 2000, the memoir was nominated for a nonfiction Pulitzer the following year. Eggers edits the popular "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" published annually. In 1998, he founded the independent publishing house, McSweeney's which publishes a variety of magazines and literary journals. Eggers has also opened several nonprofit writing centers for high school students across the United States. Eggers has written several novels and his title, A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. His most recent work of fiction, entitled The Circle, was published in 2013. His recent nonfiction books are The Monk of Mokha (January 2018) and What Can a Citizen Do? (Illustrated by Shawn Harris)(September 2018). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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