by William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch should be thought of less as a book and more as an undertaking. It took me multiple attempts to trudge through the “narrative” and actually––I assume––somewhat walk away with a bit of understanding of what I witnessed. I will also admit that the humour passed me by more-or-less unnoticed…
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by Adam Dreece I’m really confused by Breadcrumb Trail. I mean, it’s not like the story itself is confusing or anything, but let me explain myself. After finishing Along Came a Wolf, I was intrigued on the world that Dreece crafted, expecting big things to happen. And, it seems that the author agreed with me;…
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by Adam Dreece I was given a copy of Along Came a Wolf by the author in exchange for a review. Now, this isn’t something I usually do, not because I choose not to, but because I hardly ever get approached to do so, though I’m sure there are probably many good reasons for that….
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by John Pringle Over the course of my time in Thunder Bay, trying to get a feel of the local writing scene, I have picked up various publications and occasionally found myself reading a John Pringle short story. Given that they’re usually the best of the best writing that the region has offered me, I…
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by Dashiell Hammett Though I wouldn’t say I watch a lot of the genre, I believe it was Polanski’s Chinatown that showed me the possibilities of film noir, reminding me to keep an open mind for other, earlier pictures, such as The Third Man. Being more-or-less unfamiliar with detective-story fiction, however, I figured a good…
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by Oscar Wilde I don’t know if it says something of my nature that I seem to enjoy such wicked men in classic literature, so long as they possess a sharp, eloquent wit. This has been true in the past with Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Hermann of Lolita and Despair fame, respectively, and it is…
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by Jack Kerouac Hearing, in passing, of a relationship between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, I made the foolish assumption that On the Road would remind me of Naked Lunch. So it should come as no surprise that I was startled to see that Kerouac’s novel is nothing of the sort, with a wide-eyed,…
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by Lyle Nicholson When I first read Dolphin Dreams, I didn’t get it. If you take everything at face-value, things are a tad predictable and underdeveloped, alongside editorial missteps that could easily be a deal breaker in the hands of an unskilled author, but, once you dig below the surface, the story appears to be…
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by Irving Welsh Trainspotting is something of an oddity. Not so much a traditional story per se as a collection of many collected shorts being told from many different viewpoints, each loosely connected through the characters’ uncontrollable vices. Flipping between points-of-view proved to be jarring from the get-go, at least until I got some familiarity…
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by Mark Haddon When I first read the title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it immediately struck me as completely pretentious, or at least hugely pompous, and, surprisingly, the story itself proves to be neither. The plot is fairly simple and straightforward, but the main gimmick is that very adult situations…
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