Last night, I was looking at the box of (sadly) damaged books at work. I saw four I Can Read books. I have not read one in a while, so I picked them up. They average out to be a 2.5 for the four, but kids will enjoy and will be 5’s down the board. My biggest complaint with easy readers is companies do not have a uniform rating system. Publisher X might have these at a Level 1 but another would have them as […]
Madness, Illness, Grief, and The Haunting of Hill House
Beware of mild spoilers … I recently finished watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. But it is still with me. It was at times an uncomfortable watch, but it also may be one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time. It can’t really be called an adaptation of the immortal Shirley Jackson novel. That classic book could be considered more of a jumping-off point for this, an original, deeply-felt horror story. The original novel, first published in 1959, concerns a […]
And Then There Were Satanists … The Legacy
The Legacy, by John Coyne, is a mixture of an Agatha Christie whodunnit, as members of a house party are knocked off one by one, and an occult thriller. It’s not always clear how much of the menace is due to dark magic or just plain old greed, as six people have been elected to inherit a legacy — of vast wealth, property, and possibly, supernatural power. Coyne wrote the novel as a tie-in to the successful film starring Katharine Ross and Sam Elliot (and […]
Wonderful, Lyrical, Practical Magic
I saw the movie Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman quite a few years ago. It’s one of those movies that I wanted to be better than it was — it seemed to have so much potential, but it just didn’t work, even with the wonderful Aidan Quinn as Bullock’s love interest. I have been in the mood lately, Halloween coming up I guess, to read some witch-related books, so even though I didn’t love the movie I had heard good things about […]