by vjbooks | Feb 6, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
(sfgate.com, Edward Guthmann, Jan. 26) Josh Bazell read “The Godfather” when he was 9. It wasn’t standard reading for a fourth-grader but for Bazell it ignited a lifetime fascination with the Mafia. “I grew up in New York, near Little...
by vjbooks | Jan 22, 2009 | Books to Movies, We're Talking Books!
(theinsider.com, Jan. 8 ) A new film is eyeing Leonardo DiCaprio to take the lead role. New Regency has acquired the screen rights to a novel, which the actor is set to produce as well. “Beat the Reaper,” a novel by Josh Bazell, tells the story of a...
by vjbooks | Jan 22, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
(usatoday, Jan. 20, Carol Memmott) Beat the Reaper, Josh Bazell’s outrageously funny novel about a hit man turned doctor, is one book the American Medical Association won’t prescribe for you. Ignore its advice. This may be the most imaginative, albeit the...
by vjbooks | Jan 21, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
(sfgate.com, Jan. 12, Kristin Thiel) It’s cheating to begin a review with the book’s first line, but there are exceptions: “So I’m on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some f-head tries to mug me!”...
by vjbooks | Jan 17, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
Josh Bazell has a BA in English literature and writing from Brown University and an MD from Columbia. Currently a resident at the University of California, San Francisco, he wrote Beat the Reaper while completing his internship at a hospital not at all like the one...
by vjbooks | Jan 17, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
(nytimes.com, Jan. 9, Matt Ruff) In the opening scene of “Beat the Reaper,” the former mob hit man Dr. Peter Brown pauses in the act of disabling a mugger to give readers a paragraph-length tutorial on the architecture of the human arm. Halfway through the paragraph...
by vjbooks | Jan 8, 2009 | We're Talking Books!
(Three Guys One Book, Sept. 14, 2008, Jason Rice) It’s great to have a chance to interview a rising star a few months before he actually lands in bookstores. Thanks again Josh, and to the wonderful Miriam Parker who always comes through for the Three Guys blog....
by vjbooks | Dec 30, 2008 | We're Talking Books!
(beckyworkman.blogspot.com, Dec 21, Becky Workman) Funny book! An ex mob hit man in the witness protection program is placed at a hospital as a doctor. It’s viewed as his punishment for all the people that he’d killed while a part of the mob. The story is...
by vjbooks | Dec 18, 2008 | We're Talking Books!
(Publisher’s Weekly, Nov. 24, Dick Donahue) Eight mystery debuts Each season publishers promise thrills and chills from first-time mystery authors. What’s the allure of these debuts, we wondered, for readers and specialty bookstores? According to Maggie...
