I have an odd relationship with superheroes. I love the movies and TV shows, to the extent that I recently realized that I watch DC television series four nights a week. However, I’ve never been a comic book reader. I don’t know why really, but I never read them as a kid and don’t really remember my peers reading them. But all of a sudden these movies come out making billions of dollars and everyone I know is debating which minor characters are going to […]
The War at Home
When a book has over 18,000 Amazon reviews with a five-star average rating, that is a book I am going to think about reading, especially when it’s on sale for $1.99 on Kindle. Kristin Hannah’s World War II saga about French sisters who fight the war on the homefront in two very different ways is indeed well-written, but it’s adherence to genre conventions and an overly formulaic plot ultimately render it somewhat unworthy of those gaudy reviews. Two sisters who are very different, a dead […]
Long Title, Short Book
By the time you’ve finished reading the title of Dave Eggers’s 2014 novel, you’re practically halfway done with the book itself. At 230 pages it is not exactly a back-breaking tome, and since it is written entirely in dialogue, it moves even faster than its brevity would suggest. Unfortunately, the book is light in more ways than one. Despite some clever writing and a few hints at a more meaningful story, Eggers’s title is much more memorable than his story. As for that story, it […]
Life on Mars
Until now, Ray Bradbury has been one of those authors where the only book I’ve ever read is the one they assigned in high school. I am of course talking about Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury’s classic about a futuristic world where people watch wall-sized TVs and books are illegal. While I loved that novel I somehow never caught up with his other books. Having now read another work by the man, I have an even greater appreciation for his genius, and I can assure you that […]
Racecar-Driving Lesbian Nazi Spies
In the years before WWII, an unlikely collection of artists, industrialists, transvestites, homosexuals, and entertainers find their lives connected through Lou Villars, a cross-dressing lesbian athlete turned nightclub performer turned (eventually) something far worse. Prose’s novel takes the form of a collection of personal narratives, coming together to roughly tell the story of Lou Villars. The photographer Gabor Tsenyi frequently mentions her exploits in letters home to his parents in which he usually asks for more money. His wife Susanne mentions her in her unpublished […]
Do You Believe in Anecdotes?
Even if you don’t particularly like sports you’ve probably heard the voice of Al Michaels. He’s the only announcer in history to broadcast the major championships of all four major North American sports: the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup, the World Series and the Super Bowl. On top of that he’s also covered the Winter and Summer Olympics, horse racing’s Triple Crown, golf, and college football. He’s covered just about every sport imaginable, and thanks to his involvement with Wide World of Sports, a bunch […]