"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.” — Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel There are so many post-apocalyptic science fiction novels, but few are this well executed. Station Eleven is on a level with A Canticle for Leibowitz and Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy. Set in a […]
I’ve been a devoted but critical fan of Jon Stewart. For all the laughs, I thought he pulled more punches than he landed, particularly when he’d exchange softball pleasantries with agents of evil like John Yoo and Mike Huckabee. I scratched my head over the “Rally to Restore Sanity” he and Stephen Colbert put on in Washington DC a couple of years […]
“A low sound, barely audible at first, made him turn his head. For a moment he seemed almost puzzled. The sound was faint but growing and unmistakable, like distant thunder. It was engines, wide open. They were as if headed towards him. He could hear them, full and unwavering, suddenly very close, almost overhead, roaring […]
It was pitch black when I got up to pee this morning. Good, I thought, I can crawl back into bed for a while. But it turned out I’d already had my sleep-in: the bathroom clock radio said 6:45, 15 minutes later than I normally wake up. Damn it, shouldn’t the days be getting longer again […]
“Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn’t tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather’s fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall.” — William Gibson, The Peripheral The […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news. YCRT! News I mentioned this Arizona story in a previous YCRT! post. Conservative school board members and parents in Gilbert, a Phoenix-area suburb, decided to cut (literally, with scissors) pages mentioning abortion from an AP biology textbook. In the November elections the conservative […]
“There’s a link between bigotry and bad spelling.” — David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks Invitation to a Beheading Vladimir Nabokov If you’re the type who worries about “spoilers” and won’t read a book if you know how it’s going to end, you can skip this review (p.s. when I think of people like you, I picture […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Mini-Rant In my previous YCRT! post I ranted about a dangerous idea gaining momentum in conservative and religious circles: requiring schools or publishers to put advisory ratings or content alerts on books that might be assigned to elementary and secondary school students. As […]