Circe has been topping a lot of people’s Best Of books this year and for good reason. It is a well written, interesting take on several well known Greek myths but doesn’t require an extensive knowledge of Greek mythology to enjoy (although Madeline Miller is obviously a Greek mythology fan girl). Nymph-turned-witch Circe is the daughter of Helios; she is never meant to rule kingdoms because while she is immortal she is not a God. She finds happiness being a nanny to her siblings but […]
“It’s a brave new world, Mr. Portman, And we’ll be right behind you.”
No exaggeration- it took me an entire month to finish Ransom Rigg’s Map of Days. I could say that the lure of television, the Internet and an endless calendar of holiday activities that impeded my ability to complete the fourth installment of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is this was an awful book but the completionist in me felt determined to ride it out. I had actually planned this to be my ‘This is the End’ bingo square […]
Suddenly, he felt a paradoxical sense of loyalty…
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how to talk about 98 short stories written over 40 years. But this was an interesting and exhausting reading experience. There’s a lot going on here. So to begin at the beginning, JG Ballard was a British science fiction writer, known mostly to me via the 1995 David Cronenberg movie Crash and the Stephen Spielberg’s movie Empire of the Sun. A few years ago I saw the trailer for High Rise and was blown away. The movie itself is not […]
Post-Cannonball roundup
I actually read more books this year than I have since I can remember. I just don’t have the energy to review them all for various reasons. Last year I did a round-up of all the books I didn’t properly review, and I’d like to do the same now (I’m only counting this review as 1 book read, because even though it’s lots of books, it’s not a full review for each and there’s no overarching theme like I usually do in my multi-book reviews). […]