by George Orwell It’s been a while since I picked up Animal Farm, last in tenth grade, when they forced my class to read it. While I recall enjoying the story, I forgot about most of the finer details, so it seemed appropriate to revisit it. I hoped that, given my increased exposure to literature…
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I’ll be moderating an author panel on online writing a week from Friday. Come on out if you want to hear about regularly putting out content and cultivating an online readership! (If our last event is any indicator, it’ll be a blast!) We have a very interesting group at this event, discussing their various perspectives…
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by Vendela Vida I hate talking about books I didn’t like, especially those that thoroughly disappointed me, like The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. It’s a difficult task to express such a thing effectively without being mean or, at least, discouraging, while remaining honest. It’s not even that this was necessarily the worst of the worst…
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by P. G. Wodehouse Carry On, Jeeves was my first foray into the comedy of P. G. Wodehouse, and, I must say, I had no idea it could be this wonderful. The book is made up of a series of vignettes in which Bertram Wooster and his butler, Jeeves, work to help Bertie’s friends get…
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by André Alexis I often go on about the best stories being the ones to elicit the strongest emotions, and probably the clearest indicator that an author has succeeded at this is by making me cry. Alexis’ novel is a unique case where this is concerned, not simply because he made me cry, but because…
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by H. Leighton Dickson It was with great hesitation that I picked up To Journey in the Year of the Tiger. I, of course, kept an open mind, keeping the possibility that I would enjoy the story, but I was worried, mainly due to past experiences with self-published fantasy. Thankfully, I ended up enjoying Dickson’s…
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by Marius Kociejowski Kociejowski greatly impressed me with Zoroaster’s Children. I’m reluctant to compare him with Christopher Hitchens, mainly because most people undergo an almost churlish transformation when I mention Hitchens, and the last thing I want to do is discourage reading of this exceptional book. However, I can’t think of any more fitting comparison…
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by John Milton I will have to make mention of my unfamiliarity with the style of language and literature, when approaching an epic poem the likes of Paradise Lost. This isn’t to say I had an impossible time understanding the Renaissance English; it just took me much longer to get through. (And, you know, the…
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by Anakana Schofield It’s been a while since I’ve been good and disturbed when reading, but to say that Schofield’s narrative about the mentally unbalanced public masturbator and exhibitionist accomplished what it, presumably, set out to do seems like it shouldn’t be at all surprising. The story follows Martin, a man who plans his day…
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by Philip K. Dick It’s been a while since I read something that felt a bit dated. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came across that way, but for a very different reason; you could easily date Cuckoo’s Nest based on its writing style. A more fitting comparison to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?…
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