[Mind redacted spoilers—highlight to reveal.] According to the book’s back cover, “Between life and death there is a library.” Wrong. According to the book itself, “Between a life and a near death there is a library or whatever.” Stacked there are numerous copies of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Kurt Vonnegut’s […]
[Mind redacted spoilers—highlight to reveal—and paragraphs ending with questions.] Goodreads: Describe the book you’re currently reading in three words! Jarrod: Author inserts himself. Such is the wrong turn King made when resuming The Dark Tower after a six-year hiatus that nearly killed him. Equal time passed between the earlier third and fourth books—The Waste Lands […]
[Mind redacted spoilers—highlight to reveal.] A successful book recommendation has one key component. Author familiarity? Genre bias? Language fluency? None of these. (Maybe language.) One and only one question unites all readers regardless of taste and five-star/one-star ratios: “Is this part of a series?” If the answer is Yes and the recommendation is anything beyond […]
Imagine how this opening sentence hits after Emma Cline’s boring mopes: “The morning before the school shooting passed like any other, all my neighbors out at dawn performing oblations to the angels on our roofs.” Pow! Brenda Peynado’s world-building is impressive considering the stories’ fantastic tendencies—her effortlessness is almost Philip K. Dickensian with how the […]
[This is the first of… many?… straight-up book reviews, rated one to five stars.] Emma Cline and/or her publishing company reduces ten stories down to the middle thirds of ten stories. The opening thirds (when unlikable characters might be justified) and the closing thirds (when it’s fair to expect any progress or resolution whatsoever) are […]
Expectations cannot help themselves. Sometimes, as during a post-Trump era of adults running the show, science and public health are regarded with respect and decisions are made in order to, you know, not let hundreds of thousands of us die. So any president after Trump would be and has been an improvement. For instance, expectations […]
Week sixteen The game: Bills at Patriots The beer: True North Wee Swally Scotch Wee Heavy The result: Loss, 38–9 Week seventeen The game: Jets at Patriots The beer: Lakefront Eastside Dark Lager The result: Win, 28–14 The commentary: Where were we? Right: sub five hundred, no playoffs, Brady wins, Newton re-signs (not “resigns”). Sallah […]
Week thirteen The game: Patriots at Chargers The beer: Springdale Brig Mocha Stout The result: Win, 45–0 Week fourteen The game: Patriots at Rams The beer: Maine Post-Ride Snack India Pale Ale The result: Loss, 24–3 The commentary: You see, last week—pre-Rams—was the time to discuss the Chargers game. “Forty-five to zero, you say? As […]
The game: Raiders at Patriots The beer: True North Black Is Beautiful Imperial Stout The result: Win, 36–20 The knockout: Colts win, 36–7 The commentary: “It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.” […]
The game: Patriots at Seahawks The beer: Night Shift Whirlpool Pale Ale The result: Loss, 35–30 The knockout: Titans win, 33–30 The commentary: Undefeated season? I won’t rule it out! Meet the new boss, folks, because this is the team’s most impressive season-opening win-streak in years, as Cam Newton distributes regret evenly across half the […]
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