by Mark Bourrie In The Killing Game, Bourrie attempts to explain how ISIS so successfully got its foothold in the region of Syria and Iraq it currently occupies, and how the organization has been effective in attracting foreign fighters. He goes on to show historical similarities to the tactics employed by the self-described caliphate––how its…
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by J. J. Sherwood When Sherwood approached me to read and review Kings or Pawns, I remember immediately thinking––judging the book by its cover––that it wasn’t something that I would have normally picked up on my own. This is concerning on one hand, from the reviewer’s perspective, as I probably find myself outside the target…
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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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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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