seanvansickel, Author at seanvansickel.com

About seanvansickel

BOOM: Oil, Money, Cowboys, Strippers, and the Energy Rush That Could Change America Forever

By seanvansickel January 30, 2017Reading, Reading Journal1 Comment

“BOOM: Oil, Money, Cowboys, Strippers, and the Energy Rush That Could Change America Forever” is a Kindle Single written by Tony Horwitz, detailing his investigative reporting of as many aspects…

Purple Hibiscus

By seanvansickel January 28, 2017Reading, Reading Journal

Purple Hibiscus is a novel in three parts, a very common and standard thing with regard to form and execution. It is a story of adolescence and a trouble family,…

Blackout, Sarah Hepola, and Addiction Memoir

By seanvansickel January 24, 2017Reading Journal2 Comments

Sarah Hepola’s memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget is probably the best memoir I read in 2016. It’s not only exceptionally well-written, it’s brutally self-honest and open…

Swamplandia!

By seanvansickel January 19, 2017Reading, Reading Journal

So this is a book that got a lot of buzz a few years back. It took me a while to get to it. It took me a while to…

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

By seanvansickel January 3, 2017Reading, Reading Journal

So this book won a shit-ton of prizes. Katherine Boo’s decision to depict strict nonfiction/reporting within a novelistic framework is ballsy as hell and hard to do, but she pulled…

If Chins Could Kill -Bruce Campbell

By seanvansickel December 31, 2016Reading, Reading Journal

Don’t worry people, I’m still reading lit fic. But sometimes you just need to sit down and hear Bruce Campbell tell a bunch of stories about the ridiculous shit he’s…

Just Kids, Patti Smith

By seanvansickel December 28, 2016Music, Reading, Reading Journal

Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids is touching and well-written. The account of her life with the visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a glimpse into a very isolated and very culturally…

Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot

By seanvansickel December 21, 2016Reading, Reading Journal

Given recent electoral outcomes, reading essays about American political history probably doesn’t sound particularly appealing, but I found going into This American Life regular Sarah Vowell’s back catalog to be…

Blood Meridian

By seanvansickel December 20, 2016Reading, Reading Journal

I read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian about a month ago, and then went back and listened to the audiobook -the Richard Poe/Recorded Books 2007 version. This was definitely a very…

The Passage/The Twelve/City of Mirrors

By seanvansickel November 15, 2016Uncategorized

So… I read a post-apocalyptic trilogy. It’s got vampires in it, or at least an entity similar enough to warrant the nomenclature. I have no regrets. It was fucking fantastic,…