Occasionally timing is simply not on our side. Shortly after posting my review for Paul Chapman’s Porn Gnomes and Other Strange Tales, the author had a twenty four hour giveaway of his three collections, free to anyone who might have liked to download them from Amazon. Though I would have liked to have spread the good word, it was only at the very end of that day that I saw the announcement, and the price shortly thereafter returned to normal. Then again, maybe that’s for the best. The […]
I bet Silo workers keep their hats in the Caps Lock
[Second Novel In A Series Alert! Review of the first book is here] Sequels are exceptionally tricky affairs to balance. If you stray too far afield from what came before, then you risk alienating the audience you built with the original. If you hew too closely, then you’re bringing nothing new to the table. But as difficult as following up a story can be, fleshing out what came before is an even more difficult tightrope to walk. In order to write a proper prequel, you […]
Are You Kidding Me, Another One?
There’s a chance that if you’re reading this review, you might not be an active participant in Cannonball Read 6. Maybe you didn’t sign up, unsure of whether or not you could participate to your satisfaction, or you missed the deadline, or you just wanted to cheerlead from the sidelines, or any other number of reasonable and perfectly fine reasons. Nonetheless, you could always try to read fifty two Cannonball Read reviews this year! In fact, you might even be able to read fifty two […]
A farm girl walks into a bar. In her defense, it was invisible.
Unlike with Peter Pan, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was one of my first stark realizations of the differences that adaptations of works could bring. When I was wee, though I can’t recall if this was during elementary or middle school, there was a program by which one could earn a little extra credit. Quite literally, it was a program on one of the Apple terminals the school had that contained countless quizzes on books that our school library had in stock, ranging across various difficulties and lengths. […]
You Won’t Believe These 11 Weird Tricks!
The democratization of the internet allows us all to find our own niches. It is easier than it has ever been in human history to bury oneself in only like opinions to oneself or to indulge in the types of art and leisure that the greater populace at large would never even think twice of to such an extent that you might never get through it all. There’s an absolute glut of content for all stripes. Pop culture is Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse, and today we all get to […]
I Pledge Allegiants
The now standard (twice is a standard, right?) disclaimer applies: as this is review of the third book in a trilogy, I’ll probably be talking about the first two. “Divergent is the next big thing in YA fiction!” they told me. “Go read something with another kickass female protagonist once you’re done with The Hunger Games! ” they encouraged. Let’s face it, even from the beginning this was just Veronica Roth smashing The Giver into the sorting hat and calling the resulting mess a trilogy. In Divergent, we’re introduced to […]