When Julianne Moore won her Oscar for portraying a woman diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, I was intrigued. I hadn’t heard of Still Alice when it was initially published. Then, this last spring, one of my students had read the book and film for her adaptation project. That cemented it: I had to read it and watch it. I still haven’t seen the movie yet, but it had a terrific basis upon which to build. Read my full review to find out why.
Jane Austen-lite
After reading Eligible, I decided that it was high time I tackled the other two Austen Project novels. I started with Sense and Sensibility, because I had heard the least about it, both on CBR and the internet in general. I was especially curious to see how the adaptation fared, since Austen’s original seems fairly tied to Regency laws (I’m thinking about the patrilineal inheritance plot points, especially). Also, there are a lot of colorful and also milquetoast characters that are hard to emulate without […]
Consumerism and total social decay: contained in an apartment.
My sister read J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise and then wrote a rave review on Goodreads, calling it a sort of adult version of Lord of the Flies, set in a high-rise apartment building. I was sufficiently intrigued, and also by the news of a recent movie adaptation. You know me—read book first, then watch movie. So I read this book in an evening, while The Chancellor was under an enormous time crunch to get his final grades in. I decided to stay up and be supportive, […]
Only a month late to the reviewing party!
You can find my full review on my blog, but I’ve enclosed the highlights here: We’ve discussed at length what did and what didn’t work for us, and ultimately, my review is mixed. Here’s what worked for me: *The time travel—hearing how Kivrin was confused by the language and customs was deeply interesting and made me think how a “simple” difference of 28 years is actually an entire generation and could be disorienting if you didn’t know the culture at all. *Descriptions of the Plague—I […]
A fine new Erdrich novel
It’s always exciting when an author you love comes out with a new book. I’ve been working my way through Louise Erdrich’s canon, and I was pleased to see that she had a new novel, written within the same universe as some of her earlier works, including Plague of Doves and The Round House (which is my favorite Erdrich novel to date). I was curious to see how LaRose stacked up, and I’m pleased to say that it did not disappoint in the least. I […]
A disappointing devotional read
My evening devotional project has consisted of reading Ellen G. White’s Conflict of the Ages series, since I have not read them all the way through, and they are considered landmark texts in the Adventist faith. The Acts of the Apostles is the fourth in the series and is one of the least cited or quoted from the series. I was personally interested to see what insights I could gain into the apostolic quests and whether or not this book lived up to the hype. […]
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