I’m a bit of an accidental war tourist. I never plan these things but somehow, I’ve been to the trenches of Verdun, the reconstructed city centre of Ypres, the Passchendaele memorial museum, the D-day beaches and their immense cemeteries, the former sites of concentration camps, the battlegrounds of Malmedy. It seems important somehow, especially for someone my age, several generations comfortably removed from any world war. Yet the sheer scale of these immense cemeteries and their endless lines of identical headstones alone makes it paradoxically […]
Hello, Motherf***er! Got any candy?
Many thanks (fangs?) to Chatelaine for the review of this trade paperback comic, it was a blast to read. It was pretty much a no-brainer anyway. Stephen King? Good. Vampires with balls? Good. Fantastic and creative artwork? Good. So we have the story(ies) of Skinner Sweet, an 1880’s outlaw with a penchant for candy, who meets an unfortunate end at the hands of a vampire. But it doesn’t end there. Even buried and covered in 60 feet of water when the area is flooded due to […]
Melt Your Face Off Awesomeness
This is the lackluster review that occurs after someone’s computer crashes mere seconds before her hand hovers over the mouse and thinks, “I should save this…” but I didn’t…so here you go! I had to take a small break from reading recently because my husband said, “It feels like you’re taunting me with how much you’ve been reading” as he continued to dig ditches in the yard, weed gardens, build a new stand for my mailbox, clean the basement etc. So…I thought it only fair […]
A throwback to classic Greek drama
After the high of M. Butterfly, I wasn’t sure how another play would measure up or meet my expectations. I feel like I set Death and the King’s Horseman up for failure, but on the other hand, it just didn’t have the same sparkle or verve that Hwang’s play had had. At the same time, it was a very different but intriguing reading experience. Elesin Oba is the king’s chief horseman, whose son has been sent to England to study by diplomat Simon Pilkings. When […]