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Elvis Costello Shares the Books That are Most Important to Him

Published on October 28, 2015 in Fiction by Beth Wasko

Famous singer/songwriter Elvis Costello has a way with words. His songs are often darkly funny and filled with stories. Not only is he a magician with words when it comes to songwriting, but Costello recently added author to his list of achievements, proving once again just how much of a wordsmith he truly is. Unsurprisingly, he’s also a reader at heart and told New York Public Library some of his favorite literary cautionary tales. The Pat Hobby Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Benediction Classics, 2011) Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall, Spike Milligan (Viking Books, 2012) My Last Sigh, Luis Buñuel (Vintage Books, 2013) For the full post on Costello’s favorite books, visit NYPL.org.

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Review: Elvis Costello’s Life as a Wordsmith Continues in Memoir

Published on October 13, 2015 in Nonfiction by Michael Ruscoe

There may be more famous rock performers, there may be bands that pack larger venues and whose albums outsell his, but for my money, the absolute pinnacle of cool in the world of modern music is Elvis Costello. Darkly humorous and slightly dangerous, simultaneously catchy and cerebral, his songs helped form the foundation of the punk movement in the 1970s. Through nearly four decades since then, his music spanned a broad variety of genres, from jazz to classical to soul to pop to country to orchestral. His work has won him multiple awards, landed him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and placed him on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. And the…

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