Books
New Book Revisits Daft Punk’s First-Ever Interview and Unmasked Cover Shoot
Daft Punk may no longer be together, but we’re not ready to stop reliving the duo’s golden days just yet. Fortunately, Disco Pogo‘s forthcoming book, Daft Punk – We Were The Robots, makes it easy to rediscover and celebrate the duo’s many historic achievements. The hardback book aggregates the stories, interviews and photographs that shaped Daft Punk’s meteoric rise to greatness, including several gems from the pre-internet era that may have otherwise been lost deep in the electronic music archives, like handwritten notes and drawings. Much of the book covers Daft Punk through the lens of their earliest media appearances, including their first-ever interview. The chat was printed in Jockey Slut, a British publication which ran from 1993 to 200...
Fans Threaten To Boycott ‘Game Of Thrones’ Book After Authors Cry About Black Valyrians
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Ollie Upton / HBO People are moving to boycott a new “Game of Thrones” book because its two co-authors are joining the chorus of whiny white and white-adjacent crybabies who have their medieval-era long johns in a bunch over the casting of Black actors to portray characters who were described as pale in the source material. From The Grio: Fans of the sprawling fantasy series are boycotting the new book out this month, “The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One,” because of what they perceive as a “history of racism” from co-authors Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García Jr. Fans’ dismay with Antonsson and Garcia dates to well before George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic was adapted for HBO. The husband-and-wife writing te...
‘Charlie’s Good Tonight’: Read an Exclusive Excerpt From the Authorized Biography of the Rolling Stones’ Late Drummer
On Oct. 11, the quiet but mammoth impact of the Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts is celebrated with the release of Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts (available here). Authorized by Watts’ family and featuring forewards from both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the book delves into the incredible life of a man who came from a working class background and served as the anchor and guiding light of one of the world’s greatest rock bands from the early sixties until his death in 2021. Written by journalist Paul Sexton, a Billboard contributor who has also written for The Times (London), The Guardian and Daily Telegraph, Charlie’s Good Tonight draws on his 30-plus years of experience writing about the Stones as wel...
Famous Transphobe J.K. Rowling’s New Book Is About a Woman Who Is Persecuted for Being Transphobic
It may seem odd to try to make a racist transphobe a sympathetic character, but hey, that’s J.K. Rowling for you. The author’s latest book, The Ink Black Heart, is all about a content creator who is persecuted for being transphobic — a novel idea, considering Rowling’s history. The Ink Black Heart is part of Rowling’s crime series Cormoran Strike and is written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. In the book, YouTube cartoon creator Edie Ledwell is criticized for being racist, ableist, and transphobic in her work (per Rolling Stone). Soon enough, she’s doxxed with photos of her home spread online and receives death and rape threats. You’d be right to assume Rowling got the idea for The Ink Black Heart from her own life, since she has, in recent years, tweeted her supp...
Isaac Fitzgerald on Being a ‘Dirtbag’
Alexander Chee’s blurb on the back of Isaac Fitzgerald’s recently published bestselling memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, reads: “He’s a ringleader for the circus in the House of Love.” And after reading this book, I think most people would agree that Isaac Fitzgerald is certainly at least that, and then some. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a memoir-in-essays about how a lost soul with a diamond heart manages to figure out — after a series of jet-fueled, drug-addled escapades — how to put together a life out of all the pieces left in the wreckage of his past. That past spans living in the Catholic Worker’s homeless shelter in Boston, to living and working in the bars of San Francisco at the onset of the AIDS pandemic, to acting in a few porn flicks, and to round things out, Fitzgerald spent time ...
Tomorrowland Has Inspired an “Epic Fantasy Trilogy” of Novels and Films
The iconic Tomorrowland music festival is getting an official beach read makeover, thanks to an “epic fantasy trilogy” of book adaptations that are about to hit the global entertainment marketplace. Soon, you’ll be able to experience all the highs and lows of a fantasy rave bae relationship, from the physical and emotional comforts of your own home. Just kidding. But what we do know is that—at least for the first installment—themes of unity, love and nature will be at the forefront, according to literary agent Paul Lucas of Janklow & Nesbit. He’ll reportedly be representing the project’s fiction series rights while United Talent Agency’s Jason Richman will be handling the book-to-screen end. What are the books actually about? Where are the characters...
The travel that changed me: Shafik Meghji
From the biggest myth in travel writing to the dream destination he hasn’t yet seen, author Shafik Meghji tells us about the travel that changed him In his early teens, Shafik Meghji came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to make it as a professional footballer. As such, he settled for the next best thing: a job as a roving sports reporter. He won a coveted Scott Trust Bursary from the Guardian which funded his diploma in newspaper journalism and led to a role at the Evening Standard. Author Shafik Meghji When he grew tired of the 5am shifts, Shafik quit his job to join his girlfriend on a trip around the world. They spent a year backpacking around India and South America, visiting places like the Thar desert, the Western Ghats, Patagonia and the Amazon. The trip sparked a new a...
20 best books about Antarctica
From harrowing accounts of survival to the heartwarming tale of a rescued penguin, we list our favourite books about Antarctica The most inhospitable place on Earth is an engrossing setting for any story, be it fictional or factual. Unsurprisingly, Antarctica’s literary canon is filled with tales of tragedy and/or survival against the odds. It would be easy, then, to fill this list with biographies of Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton alone. But Antarctica deserves attention beyond its tales of tragedy. With that in mind, we have taken a broader view. There are, of course, profiles of the pioneers and their epic journeys of discovery spanning more than a century of polar exploration, but we’ve also included a diverse mix of memoirs, biographies and novels – from crime to science fiction – all...
‘How I met Satoshi’: The mission to teach 100M people about Bitcoin by 2030
Dušan Matuska is, among many other things, a Bitcoin educator and consultant. The Slovak’s dream is to educate 100 million people about Bitcoin (BTC) by 2030 through talks, podcasts, webinars, workshops and even a Bitcoin education center in a far-flung destination (plans are currently under wraps). Alongside his Bitcoin teaching aspirations, he helps out at a small-scale Bitcoin mining facility in Slovakia, co-founded a crypto cafe known as Paralelni Polis in the capital city of Bratislava, and has translated well-known Bitcoin books into his native tongue, Slovak. But, how did he get here? And, what does meeting Satoshi Nakamoto have to do with it? It starts with Bitcoin, which he first heard about in 2015. But like many people, “I didn’t take a lot of notice. I thought it was...
Dave Grohl’s ‘Storyteller’ Spends Another Week on the New York Times Best-Sellers List
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Dave Grohl is on a winning streak. The Foo Fighters singer/guitarist’s memoir The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music moved up a couple of notches to land at No. 9 on the New York Times best-sellers list, which is up two spots from the previous week. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Grohl’s book has spent an impressive 20 weeks on the best-sellers list, and landing in the top 10 puts him a few spots behind Will Smith’s self-titled memoir, which is at No. 5 after notching 15 weeks on the NYT best-sellers list. Mat...
LeVar Burton Encourages Kids to Read Banned Books: “That’s Where the Good Stuff Is”
Though LeVar Burton hasn’t hosted Reading Rainbow since it ended in 2006, he’s still finding ways to encourage young children to pick up a book. In light of recent book bans across certain schools in the US, Burton appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah with some sage advice: Read forbidden literature. The book ban outrage came to a head last month when a Tennessee school board voted to ban Maus — Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel based on his father’s experience at Auschwitz — claiming it contained material that was inappropriate for students. While classics like the Harry Potter series and Huckleberry Finn have all been subjected to some silly schoolwide bans in the past, Black authors have been particularly targeted, with LGBTQ and ...
Chuck Klosterman Returns in the Nick of Time
“[W]hat I have come to realize is that those four or five years represent the only time when things can seem new. When you’re a teenager, you can’t appreciate innovation intellectually and when you reach 30, you can’t enjoy innovation viscerally. And yet there is a very specific window of time when newness can feel truly authentic, and it’s a really amazing moment in your life.”“…I miss when things were new.” – Chuck Klosterman, “Out of Time,” SPIN In 2004, Chuck Klosterman wrote an essay for SPIN titled “Out of Time,” wherein, as the quote above says, he asserted the following: that our individual conceptions of newness are shaped by our experiences during the ages of 20 to 25; consequently, our reception of the world and of culture is forever mediated through this fixed understanding. It...
