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Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
“You’re not gonna blame me because the phone went dead. I’m not the phone company. Nobody’s the phone company anymore!” — Kelli Maroney as Samantha in Night of the Comet Farewell (2009, France) Really good cold war spy story in the Frederick Forsythe/John Le Carré tradition, made even better by being based on real events. […]
How’s that Nook e-reader I got for my birthday last year working out? Glad you asked. Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted). That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Today is the first day of Banned Books Week, which runs from September 24 to October 1. In honor of BBW, rather than link to the standard lists of books under fire from parents, religious fundamentalists, and political activists, I’ll […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Banned Books Week (September 24 to October 1) is almost upon us. What’s it all about? From the American Library Association’s site: Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during […]
“A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long. “Ten years ago, it was a good living. Back then, tamarisk shouldered up against every riverbank in the Colorado River Basin, along with cottonwoods, Russian olives, and elms. Ten years […]
“Hey Kowalski, you out there? ” — Cleavon Little as Super Soul in Vanishing Point Mesrine Part II: Public Enemy # 1 (2008, France) I mentioned in my review of Mesrine: Part I, Killer Instinct how the film rapidly moved from one Mesrine-committed crime to another, with very little in between: all shooting, no introspection. […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. My last YCRT column was all about Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five. Can you stand one more link? It’s a good one. Oh, all right, one more, in honor of the respectable citizens of Republic, Missouri … you know, the ones […]
“Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she’d invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words – ‘Friend’ and ‘real’ and ‘story’ and ‘change’ – words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some like ‘identity’, […]