by Stephen King This wasn’t my first time reading The Shining but, my goodness, it’s been a long time. My original encounter with the story was back in Grade 8, and it sure left an impression on that younger version of me. I distinctly remember being super excited upon finishing it. I almost immediately ran…
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by Yahtzee Croshaw I’m a big fan of Croshaw, or at least his Zero Punctuation videos. From various spurts of watching episodes religiously, it became clear that Croshaw definitely knows a thing or two about humour. So, while I wasn’t certain that he could necessarily write a compelling fantasy story, I figured I would at…
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by Andrew F. Sullivan A story like Waste gets me a bit excited and at least a little bit sad, because I find myself tickled pink whenever an author can be as unflinching in their description of some very savage moments as Anakana Schofield or perhaps even Patrick deWitt as Sullivan is here. If an…
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I’ll be participating in the Blog Tour for J. J. Sherwood’s Steps of Power series. Stay tuned later this month for my review of Kings or Pawns! As a bonus, the author is giving away signed hardcovers of both Kings or Pawns and Heroes or Thieves! Enter here for your chance to get one! (The contest…
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by Joan Thomas One problem with overanalyzing everything, as I tend to do, is that deeper meanings aren’t always readily apparent after a single reading. In the example of The Opening Sky, I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the heavy-handed environmentalist preaching that suddenly appears partway in. Was this merely a measure of…
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by Allen Ginsberg While I’ve spent a great deal of time sampling the likes of great Beat prose, I hadn’t really encountered any of the poetry, unless you want to count tiny snippets included in The Dharma Bums. As such, I figured Howl and Other Poems was probably the place to start; I was most…
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by Hunter S. Thompson This was actually my third time reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in its entirety. When I first made my way through it, I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever read, so it’s become one of those things I revisit from time to time, for a…
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by Amy Jones I should really start this review off with a confession: I didn’t find We’re All in This Together particularly funny, despite my copy of the book telling me that I should, but that’s probably just a measure of being unable to easily fit joy into my hardened heart. It seems that I…
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by Art Spiegelman I was a bit concerned when Maus II began with a big text dump in which Spiegelman expresses his apprehensions going into the project, along with inadequacies he felt growing up. Of course, this soon enough makes way to his father, Vladek, up to his old miserly shenanigans again, and I could…
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by Art Spiegelman Man, first Ablutions and then this; I really don’t know what I was thinking. I need to read something light and happy next, to help wash this wave of despair away. (Save me, Wodehouse!) Though, to be perfectly honest, I’ll probably be reading the second instalment of Maus immediately after this one,…
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