I have a confession: I missed a lot of new albums this year because my nose was buried in books (more on that later). There were a lot of bands who released highly anticipated albums as well as a few indie artists who splashed onto the scene. Here are ten of my favorites, which surprisingly doesn’t include Of Monsters and Men after their sophomore effort failed to resonate with me.
Here we go:
Michael Bible is an emerging American writer hellbent on stripping away the nonessentials of fiction. His provocative novella, Sophia explores an ambiguously spiritual reverend named Maloney. Throughout Sophia, Maloney and his best friend Eli flee the religious South they call home as they drink gallons of gin and have sexual fantasies about the Holy Ghost.
Bible’s jagged thoughts flow together to produce a dark comedy that will make readers think hard about the sins in the world around them.
Wow. This has been a year filled with extraordinary debuts. Some of them were expected – like a spinoff from one of the best dramas ever – and some of them weren’t – a techno-thriller that debuted on a network known for campy sitcoms – but all of them were stellar. What’s scary is that I haven’t even seen remotely close to all of them. I debated putting HBO’s miniseries Show Me a Hero on here, but decided to only include continuing series. Similarly, The Jinx was left off because it is a docu-series, and I only wanted fictional shows. However, I wanted to give them a shout out for captivating my attention.
Here we go:
Any show worth watching has already premiered in 2015 (thank you, Amazon, for waiting until the last month). Here’s a list of my favorite shows that returned this year. You’ll notice some heavy hitters missing. For instance: I unfortunately don’t watch Game of Thrones regularly. That means I realize that this isn’t a best of list. You can’t really argue with me on my personal taste. Also, this is based off of episodes airing in 2015 only; not considering the whole series. I actually left off one of my favorite shows from last year (How to Get Away with Murder) simply because this season isn’t living up to my expectations.
Here we go:
[Update: Richard Edwards is releasing his first solo album. Read about it here.]
Richard Edwards is set to release a box set of rarities recorded by his feverishly followed band, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. The Bride on the Boxcar – A Decade of Margot Rareties: 2004-2014 will provide fervent fans with demos of hit songs, tracks that were cut from albums and as well as different versions of fan-favorite releases from the band’s five LPs. It will be released December 4th via Joyful Noise.
Edwards, who has been suffering from stomach affliction for years, revealed that he “recently re-entered a pretty gnarly stretch with this stomach ailment” that he has been fighting and is “spending a lot of time at the doctor’s and in bed.” He asked if we could communicate via email. The following responses are unedited, and reprinted from his original email.
J. Ryan Stradal has a lot on his plate. He is the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, an editor-at-large at Unnamed Press and on the advisory board of the non-profit writing and tutoring organization 826LA. On top of all that he has a New York Times Bestseller with his debut novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest.
The novel is an ode to Stradal’s love of his native midwest and the culinary world. He’s adamant on writing stories that dive deeper into underrepresented characters and finding the next interesting novel.
He spoke at length about the Los Angeles literary scene, the evolution of Kitchens and the beginning of what’s next.
UPDATE : Yet another 5 short stories you can – and should – read online right now can be found here.
I posted “5 more short stories you can – and should – read online right now” over a year ago in response to an article Paste Magazine posted. It’s gotten a consistant amount of hits since then, so I decided to follow it up with this post.
The National Book Awards will be announced on Wednesday (November 18). Here are my predictions for who will win the fiction award. I should start off by noting that I really enjoyed two longlisted works that didn’t make the finals better than some of the finalists. Those were Bill Clegg’s Did You Ever Have a Family (you can read an interview I did with him here) and Nell Zink’s Mislaid. Even so, I still think the eventual winner is among the following.
ADAM VITCAVAGE 