Most books are really intended to be read once, only. The parts play out in a single direction, and the twists twist and the turns turn and by the end, all the accumulated surprises and insights converge into a single… Read More ›
Book Reviews
Fantasy with Attitude: The Gallows Black by Sam Sykes
If you want an action-packed fantasy beach read, this is the one. Told by Sal The Cacophony, (think Guy Pierce in Lockout) a hitwoman with a magic hand cannon of a gun that fires rounds fueled by the ashes of… Read More ›
The Eternity of Art: Craig Laurence Gidney’s A Spectral Hue
The town of Shimmer, Maryland, has drawn various African American artists for centuries. Although the artists used different mediums, from quilts to dolls to oil, they all use the same hauntingly unique, shifting color of a marsh bell orchid to… Read More ›
“The Knife in our Soul”: Robert Brockway’s The Unnoticeables
Whether it’s Binary, HTML, Spanish, Cuneiform, or Sanskrit, there’s no denying language is how we store knowledge and no matter what someone says, we have no language to accurately describe the concept of God. Alpha and omega, Allah, Michael and… Read More ›
All Hail the King: A Beginner’s Guide to Stephen King
if you’re new to Stephen King, where do you start? Which of his 50+ novels are worth reading? Joe and I share our favorites.
“Make Me the Monster I Need to be”: Half-Witch by John Schoffstall
How many of us do the right thing when no one is looking? Function on the superego level all the time? Or are we all calculating ambition, ruled by the id and the ego’s veiled self-interest? Altruism is out of… Read More ›
Revisiting the Old and Nearly (but not quite!) Forgotten – Jennifer Pelland’s UNWELCOME BODIES
There’s this thing that happens in books, wherein after about three or six months, they’ve been out enough that no one really looks at them or takes them seriously anymore, for the most part. Books have a short shelf-life in… Read More ›
Strong Roots: Family in Jade City by Fonda Lee
We’re all products of our family. Our parents shape us and we bear the burden of living under their thumbs. Rebel or conform at your peril. When your family is the mafia, rebellion comes at a cost. The award winning… Read More ›
Something is Happening in Austin, and in Port Saint Frey
I don’t know if you knew this, but something is happening in Austin. Some cities seem to have a high concentration of talent. Some of these cities make sense, if only because of their relative size and access to the… Read More ›
Maus is Beautiful
I was skeptical when I found a graphic novel at the school I teach for. I’ve never been able to read one. Unlike every other graphic novel I’ve tried, I could actually read and get into Maus by Art Spiegelman…. Read More ›