I’m going back a few years for this one, but Aquamarine was on TV last week, and I was reminded how much I love this movie. Yes, it’s mostly for preteens and has lots of silly preteen moments, but at heart it’s a sweet story about friendship and selflessness. If you’ve seen Aquamarine, you may […]
Welcome to “Blast From the Past,” a new category that sort of created itself. Let me explain. Yesterday I went looking for a book in my very unorganized library and ended up finding this one instead, Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia. I read it and the other two books in the series about ten years […]
If you’re planning a trip to Hell to get back your lost love, the best way to get there is by Checker Cab, because if you live in Los Angeles, the entrance to Hell is probably not where you think it is. This particular cab driver, however, knows the way and will get you there, […]
Brett Battles is just like a carnival juggler. Imagine one of those burly guys with a bare oiled chest, juggling impossible objects in front of a stunned crowd by torchlight. Imagine a chainsaw, a sabre, a fiery club, all flying in air at the same time, and Battles below keeping the whole thing spinning with […]
So, after reading Ready Player One, it turns out I’m a geek. I suspected I was, since I’ve always had a fondness for all things geeky. But although I was never really into video games (I do remember, however, obsessively playing a game called “Castle” sometime around 1988 or ’89. It was loaded on my […]
Usually in this blog, I try to keep my reviews to current releases, which makes sense because I rarely “go back in time” to try to catch up with books I’ve missed. This October, however, I broke that rule and picked up Handling the Undead, a book that was released a year ago. I did […]
Let’s get this straight: Zone One is a zombie novel. There is blood, viscera, various bodily fluids streaming through the gutters, dead men walking, and heads being blown off right and left. There is terror and running away and hiding from the dead. There is a dying world without electricity, ash-covered streets, and bleak prospects […]
“The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.” I read A Monster Calls and Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck back-to-back, and they seemed eerily similar in more ways than one. My original plan was to review them together, but after writing my review for Wonderstruck, I realized that although A Monster Calls is also a […]
The wonderfully inventive Brian Selznick broke new ground in 2007 with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a “children’s” book that combined text and illustrations in a way that had never really been done before. In fact, half the book is text and the other half full-spread illustrations, and the illustrated passages tell just as much […]
A contortionist folds herself into a tiny box. A young girl’s gown changes from white to black in front of your eyes. A magical ice garden waits to be explored within a black and white striped tent. Welcome to the Night Circus, a place where imagination is real, and reality is whatever you can imagine. […]