Its become very clear that Marisha Pessl is now a MUST author for me. I loved her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. And while I didn’t have the same immediate feelings for Night Film, that book crept up on me and ended up scaring me more than I thought possible. With Neverworld Wake, Pessl presents her first YA offering, and it offers a combination of the private school privileged world seen in Calamity Physics and a nightmarish view of human nature, similar to […]
“It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up.”
I like that Ibi Zoboi didn’t call this a “retelling” of Pride and Prejudice. She’s going with the term “remix.” That seems to fit a little better, because while the main plot is pretty similar, there are lots of little things that don’t quite fit into a strict retelling. What Zoboi did instead was take a story that most of us already know, flip parts of it around, and make it her own. And it really worked for me. Zuri Benitez was born and raised […]
But what of Barry the swim instructor? Does he get a happy ending?
A few years ago (I don’t know…maybe 2007?), back when I was addicted to watching Craig Ferguson’s Late Night show, he had an interesting episode in which he sat and talked to his friend Stephen Fry. No monologue, no questions on cards, no skits, no dancing horse. Just a conversation between old friends. It was fascinating. They talked about all sorts of stuff, but what I remember most was their discussion about writing fiction. Fry had several books, their good friend Hugh Laurie had just […]
“When the mind’s filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.”
The reviews on Uncle Stevie’s latest tome have been mostly similar: a great, suspenseful first half, telling a story about a police investigation into the brutal murder of a child by a seemingly innocent man…and a less successful second half, filled with supernatural elements and a character from earlier novels. Most reviews have pointed out that the story presented in the first half were quite enough for a full novel: local good citizen arrested for horrific crime, town turns against him and his family, regardless […]
In the immortal words of Doug Judy, “So why don’t you just chill and eat some sexy-ass lobster?”**
Craig Robinson, truly a “man for all seasons,” continues to prove that he’s a national treasure with his debut children’s book, Jake the Fake. Did you love Craig on The Office? Or in his recurring role as Doug Judy, the Pontiac Bandit, on Brooklyn 99? How about his annoying, and yet charming, commercials for Dodge? [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsmyyHhGjHw&w=560&h=315] Did you ever hear him sing Radiohead’s Creep (with an all-Office backup band. Creed!)? [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwvMJDlBtA&w=560&h=315] And he was even great on Ghosted, which was really quite […]
If they make a movie of this one, I hope it also has Tim Daly in it.
Way back in the olden days (the 1990s, gasp!) there was a little book called The Object of My Affection about a kind of fat and lonely girl who falls in love with her gay best friend while she’s pregnant and they decide to raise the baby together, and then life gets in the way, etc. Everybody read it, I think it was mandatory book club fodder at the time, even though I’m not sure anyone really loved it, or really even liked it. They […]
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