"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
“I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all. The hours that made them were good, and so were the moments that made the hours. I have had responsibilities and work, dangers and […]
“People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.” — David Mitchell, Slade House Slade House David Mitchell Slade House is a companion (not exactly a sequel) to Mitchell’s previous novel The Bone Clocks, but it is a more compact and to-the-point story, as readable as anything Mitchell has written. Like […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Textbooks confiscated from Tucson Unified School District classrooms, January 2012 Banned Books Week Commentary From Friends & Foes Can you parse this Banned Book Week letter to the editor? I can’t make heads or tails of it! An attempt to ban a […]
Empty. That was how it felt. Salander had hardly slept for a week and she had probably also had too little to drink and eat, and now her head ached and her eyes were bloodshot and her hands shook and what she wanted above all was to sweep all of her equipment to the floor. […]
Look, I don’t have to explain myself or justify my choices, so save your “I quit watching that after the first episode” cracks for someone who’ll be impressed by your brilliance and discretion, all right? I will admit, however, that I’ve fallen into some lazy habits when it comes to watching TV, because I’ve been […]
There were stories in sweat. The sweat of a woman bent double in an onion field, working fourteen hours under the hot sun, was different from the sweat of a man as he approached a checkpoint in Mexico, praying to La Santa Muerte that the federales weren’t on the payroll of the enemies he was […]
No, I don’t have anything to say about Greece. I don’t like what’s going on in the Eurozone, but I’m not the person to turn to for answers. Actually, “greeking” is a term associated with those fake license plates you see in car commercials. Fake plates in car ads have always bugged me. Why make them generic […]
This showed up on the io9 website today: I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance, because io9’s choice of a graphic to accompany its story about women dominating the Nebulas is the cover of a Nebula-winning book written by a man, Jeff Vandermeer. Granted, the strongest and most well-drawn characters in Annihilation, as in Authority and Acceptance, the other books […]