I saw the movie Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman quite a few years ago. It’s one of those movies that I wanted to be better than it was — it seemed to have so much potential, but it just didn’t work, even with the wonderful Aidan Quinn as Bullock’s love interest. I have been in the mood lately, Halloween coming up I guess, to read some witch-related books, so even though I didn’t love the movie I had heard good things about […]
“It Was A Pleasure To Burn” – Fahrenheit 451
The kid is in high school now, and although her getting older must mean that I, too, must be getting older (yikes!), there are a few perks. One of them is getting to watch her discover things, like some great books that I read when I was around her age. First up is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian masterpiece. The story of a society, perhaps our own, that has decided that the ideas included in books are dangerous, seems eerily prescient. The floor-to-ceiling view […]
The Truth About Cats and Werewolves
I’ve been in the mood for classic horror paperbacks lately. I recently read Whitley Strieber’s Hunger trilogy and liked the first book, so thought I’d try two more of his earlier works. His first book. The Wolfen, was written in 1978. It follows two New York City police officers, Rebecca Neff and George Wilson, who try to solve a seemingly unsolvable case — the brutal attack of two fellow officers. All the signs seem to point to an animal attack, but not just any ordinary animal. […]
A Book Series from Hunger
Whitley Strieber wrote The Hunger in 1981. It was his second novel and featured Miriam Blaylock, a glamorous female vampire, her current companion John. A third side to the triangle is a brilliant young doctor, Sarah Roberts, whose research may provide an answer to Miriam’s immortality and what it might mean to the human race. The book was memorably made into a sexy, campy feature film by Tony Scott in 1983 with Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon as the trio. What makes The […]
All plurals are ultimately singular.
Packing My Library – 4/5 Stars This short memoir/thought piece takes it cue from the Walter Benjamin essay I will write about afterward and addresses what it means to pack one’s library away, presumably for good, as one heads into the final stages of life. Alberto Manguel is rounding on 70 and after decades of moving through and all over the world, he seems to have reached a place where he’s able to give up his library. His sentiments are especially interesting if you take […]
still in the mood for thrillers
Still in the mood for thrillers. Here are some recent reads: And Then There Were None, 1939, by Agatha Christie This one is unlikely to be reimagined by Kenneth Branagh, but you never know. And Then There Were None is one of Christie’s grimmest, and most famous tales. Due to its original title, it is also one of her most controversial. Christie loved to use nursery rhyme references in her book titles, and this book actually incorporates an entire rhyme in the book as a twisted […]
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