So I read Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life last year, and despite the amazing reviews it got, I just did not like it. It was depressing, the main character keep dying over and over (which I know was the whole point, but gawd), and I just could not enjoy it. But I liked Atkinson’s style of writing, and Stephen King, of all people, recommends her over and over, so I thought I’d give it another shot. “Patricia embraces me on the station platform. ‘The past […]
Come get some
“So long as there is a kingdom on this windswept island, there will be war.” I started reading Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories just over a month ago. As I’m now on the 4th instalment, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m a fan. Uhtred Uhtredsson started the series as the heir to Bebbanburg following the death of his older brother, until his father was killed by invading Danes and he was taken and raised by his father’s killer. Taking advantage of his absence, […]
If “American Gods” was written by a toddler on Ritalin
This was another instance of I Want More (but maybe, a little differently!) Cory O’Brien retells popular and lesser known myths in a style that reads more “Internet blogging” (all the CAPS) than “published author.” It’s fun and entertaining for the first few, better known, myths but it gets old and makes some of the unfamiliar myths harder to read. There are also a lot of dick jokes. “So obviously the moral of the story is that the best way to deal with a rampaging psychopath […]
“When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win”
Thanks again to SisterCoyote for my White Trash gift exchange! “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” That Lyndon B Johnson quote, featured in White Trash, floated around the Internet in the weeks following Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton and it helped many people sum up their feelings about last year’s election. This logic is not unlike the […]
“The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
Julian Fellowes is best known as the creator of the TV series Downton Abbey, a show that focused on the complex relationships between classes in the England of the past, that combined social commentary with soapy romance and melodrama, its increasingly ridiculous plot lines peppered with anachronisms in both characterisation and language. All of those things feature prominently in Belgravia, a novel whose central plot point is a 25-year-old secret and the consequences that result from that secret coming finally to light. I won’t spoil the […]
God Save the King
I think all of us went through an Egypt phase in school. It was right after our paleontologist phase and right before we became too cool for phases. We devoured any National Geographic with the pyramids on the cover, became a little too knowledgeable about the macabre process of mummification, and spouted off as many facts about the “cool” pharaohs that our patient parents would listen to. There was the trifecta of the most badass pharaohs to ever pharaoh-Nefertiti, King Tut and Cleopatra. Well, with […]
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