"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
“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’, […]
“The man who said ‘I’d rather be lucky than good’ saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. I’m starting with an essay on censorship by Chris Crutcher. Crutcher, an author whose books are frequently challenged and banned from school libraries and reading lists, is coming around to the same conclusion I’ve drawn: that parental book challenges are […]
“Young Lamar Jimmerson went to France in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Forces, serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope, and then later as a telephone switchboard operator at AEF headquarters in Chaumont. It was there on the banks of the Marne River that […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. From my last You Can’t Read That! post: Apparently it’s a widely-held belief in anti-gay Christian conservative circles that the government — particularly the jack-booted thugs who run public libraries and schools — foists pro-gay literature on young readers while […]
“My God, the kid was right. The killer is the tire.” — Stephen Spinella as Lieutenant Chad in Rubber Casino Jack (2010) I watched the straight documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a couple of months ago (you can read my review here). The documentary is an interesting contrast with this dramatization, […]