Despite my admittedly less than sophisticated taste in literature, I never expected to write about a children’s book for Cannonball Read. However, I was recently introduced to The Man in the Ceiling while I was helping my mom clean out my brother’s room and discovered it among his various childhood artifacts. As I know Jules Feiffer from his brilliant political and satirical cartoons in the Village Voice and from illustrating one of my own childhood favorites The Phantom Tollbooth, I was intrigued. With my brother’s […]
Notes on the Practical Limits of Longing
Her love for him is not something that can be changed— it’s physics, not emotion: It’s the exact weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world. In my ongoing tradition this year of reading lesser known books from my favorite authors, I read Charles Yu’s short story collection Third Class Superhero. I urge everyone to drop everything […]
When Shall We Live if Not Now?
In an attempt to be better about reading female authors this year, I decided to try another Shirley Jackson novel. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a personal favorite and her short stories are wonderfully creepy. Given that The Haunting of Hill House is always checked out of both my university and public libraries (and probably will be until the day I die), I picked up The Sundial, which I had never heard of before. The story deals with the wealthy Halloran family […]
And His Name That Sat Upon Him Was Death
I first heard about this book during a podcast interview with Bryan Fuller, the awesome showrunner behind Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Dead Like Me (three of my favorite shows). He cited it as an inspiration for the premise of Dead Like Me. This did a pretty good job of selling it, even though I initially thought the idea was a bit derivative of Terry Pratchett’s Mort (although it was actually published 4 years before Mort) and thought it would be entertaining “Discworld Lite.” On a Pale […]
Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here
When I first heard of Hogarth’s Shakespeare Series, modern retellings of various Shakespeare plays by various novelists, I was mildly intrigued by the concept. When I first realized that my favorite Shakespeare, The Tempest, was being reinterpreted by Margaret Atwood, I immediately added it to my must-read list….and promptly forgot about it for a couple of months while I waited for it to arrive from the long queue at the library. But at last, it arrived and was promptly devoured within 3 days of reading. […]
Forgiveness Lives Alone and Far Off Down the Road
Don’t read Lorrie Moore. Everybody should read Lorrie Moore immediately. Lorrie Moore is not recommended, lest you dissolve into a pile of tears and whiskey because she says everything you feel and think deep down and not so deep down. Lorrie Moore is essential, because she says everything you feel and think deep down and not so deep down. I had already been a Lorrie Moore fan. Her writing is beautiful, her female characters complex and flawed and real. Her jokes are sharp, her heartbreaks palpable. […]