Hey, it’s been awhile since my last proper book review, or rather since I rewrote the entire Dark Tower series. I just read that shit again and it holds all the way up—you’re welcome! A few times this month (including today, for another couple of hours), noted lawyer/“sportswriter” Mike Florio has generously subtracted the full […]
I’ve been an active blog-maker since August 5, 2005, initially at Blogger squaring off Biff! Bang! Pow! (Vol. 1) for fifteen years. My lead post, which likely took a month to write and another few days to publish, is an explanation to no one about why I was posting at all: So I’m a blogger […]
Scene: it’s autumn. Route 1 along the North Shore (title case) of Massachusetts—rather, “Old Route 1,” to distinguish it from the stretch with strip clubs and furniture outlets and orange dinosaurs. The scenic portion with private schools and shuttered restaurants and blind intersections that almost kill you (truth). Radio: on. “Fire” by the Crazy World […]
Goodreads: Describe the book you’re currently reading in three words! Jarrod: Author reinserts himself. If I’m going to review books V and VI then I might as well close it out with number VII—more Roman numerals, please! Do I then follow the author’s lead and start over with The Gunslinger next? “Stephen King fled through […]
“We have a Switch??” Nothing gets past a nine-year-old (at the time) and thus last April’s school-vacation surprise was blown. That’s what I get for assuming consumer discretionaries can’t creep their way into kids’ awareness in the age of commercial-less streaming. That’s what I get for making no effort whatsoever to hide the distinctive red […]
Stephen King’s Under the Dome was adapted into a CBS series a few years ago. The book was good (not great) but the show was awful (not mediocre) and I hate-watched the hell out of it for some reason. That reason was The AV Club’s weekly recaps, where Joe McAlister (one of several protagonists) was […]
[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 […]
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