Garrett Zecker's Blog, page 4

A new publication was published today, “Step Aside, Gray Lady: Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank’s Reckoning with Bigotry on Broadway”

Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank’s Bigotry on Broadway is a collection of essays that presents a scathing indictment of the stark whiteness of the Great White Way, and the ways in which we have been conditioned to accept some of the more overtly sinister examples of marginalization from its history, show storylines, casting, and the momentum that continues to carry rac...

Lillian Fishman’s Acts of Service is a brutal, labyrinthine novel about a young woman navigating a maze of sexual expectations of herself and society. When Eve, a young queer woman in a long-term relationship opens the door to a complicated affair that challenges her identity as much as her boundaries, she has to examine and reflect on the ways in which we reflect on what it means to serve, to submit, to explore, and to live up to the mores and boundaries of where our own identities lie reflecte...

This is a candid and gorgeous portrait of an intimate relationship between two young women at the height of stepping into the sophisticated and confusing emotional lives of adulthood. We follow Sylvie through the navigation of her ten years with her best friend and confidante Andrée. From understanding the ins and outs of the post-World War I period, to philosophizing on love both romantic and platonic, to trying to outsmart the adults’ expectations of them in a world that cared very little for ...

John Vercher’s After the Lights Go Out is a stunning sophomore release from the Edgar and Anthony Award-nominated author of Three-Fifths. I absolutely loved the grittiness and social commentary of Three-Fifths and looked forward to his latest release with great anticipation. After the Lights Go Out is a fight novel, and honestly, I think it is the first one that I’ve ever read. Knowing what I know about fight cinema, however, it’s clear that the heart and strength of Vercher’s character-driven s...

Brent Spiner is known as a lot of things – Lt. Commander Data, Dr. Brackish Okun, Devlin Bowman, Dr. Strom, and, well more television doctors than one can possibly count and a villainous Stromboli (similarly a doctor of terror) in a horrifying Pinocchio reboot that came out just as George W. Bush stepped into office. 

He is also one hell of a guy. As I stepped into experiencing his new role as writer of prose, I knew I was getting into something great. His personable nature and dedication to ...

This is going to be a relatively long post as I have spent the better part of the past few months teaching and crafting a unit plan for a book that needed one but didn’t really seem to have one – Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. I have been working on my in-person contribution to the Central Massachusetts Community Read program – one that my students and I haven’t been able to participate in since we completed our work with Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You in 2018 that you can read about here...

Scott Blackburn is about to hit the ground running hard with his debut southern crime novel, It Dies With You. The novel is a gritty portrait of southern sprawl, as a part-time boxer and bouncer Hudson Miller is suddenly called home when his estranged father is murdered in what looks like a botched robbery of his junkyard business. With Leland’s empire consisting of nothing more than a little cash, some trailers he rented, and land that is all but impossible to get rid of because of toxic automo...

Mel Brooks’ Autobiography is a triumph of a book that I read through once, dipped in a bunch of times afterward, and then read through a second time – all in the timeframe between the day it came out and the day I decided to post my review. Two readthroughs, and a schmear of dipping in here and there. It is an absolute riot, as well as a biography that can easily entertain and capture the attention of so many people – the greatest generation, Jewish Americans, lovers of comedy, lovers of crotche...

Gary Shteyngart’s sardonic work has always been a dark, lovely, and fun experience for me. I follow his work closely, and appreciate the sharp teeth of his honest candor that can both sting and tickle when it rears up bites mid-sentence. After all, who else can write about one’s experience with a botched later-in-life circumcision that draws near universal acclaim for a combination of sharp, intriguing, funny, and tragic energy (besides Jonathan Cameron Mitchell, of course)?  His newest vent...

Anthony Doerr’s newest novel is an adventure unparalleled in not only the rest of his work but in today’s canon in general. It is a sprawling, experimental piece that at its very heart is a striking ode to storytelling itself, and the ways in which we write, preserve, transmit, and transmute the stories passed down from generation to generation.

The novel follows five characters through several different time periods from the ancient past to the far future, each juggling, performing, reading,...