Patricia Highsmith might be best known for her Ripley novels and their film adaptations, but Strangers on a Train, her first novel, set the path for her career and has likewise been adapted several times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. It is an unsettling, suspenseful psychological thriller that features brutal crime and some deep philosophical pondering. Guy Haines, an up and coming architect, is on his way home to Metcalf, TX, with the expectation that his philandering wife Miriam is going to finally […]
An exorcist, a vampire and a mermaid walk into a bar…
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross ! Sure, the end is nigh… but first, meet Superman !! (read the rest of the review on my blog.)
Scully Can Write!
I liked this book, a lot. I got the audio version from the library read by Scully herself. She’s very very good, which surprises none of us. This book takes place in the world, with involvement in Haiti and Tehran and Antarctica. The characters are diverse and Anderson carries their accents with skill and subtlety. They are believable, families worried about each other, teenagers who sound and behave like (brilliant) teenagers, world leaders who are also human beings, mysterious baddies who are not caricatures. The […]
The Best Book You’ve Never Heard Of
Have you ever felt the urge to let your inner hipster come out? I’ve got just the thing for you: a book nobody has ever heard of. And it’s actually good. You can sit at your local non-Starbucks organic overpriced coffee joint, fancy hardback in front of you, and gaze sternly over your thick-rimmed glasses and your cashmere scarf and, your voice full of disdain, inquire of other hipsters: What do you mean, you’ve never read Willem Frederik Hermans? What is wrong with you? This […]