Ghostroots
More powerful than gore, I find an eerie atmosphere is what really makes a collection like Ghostroots tick.
21st Century
Works written in the year 2000 or later.
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Victorian Psycho
Summer Cold It’s been one of those messy, chaotic weeks. Lots of phone calls, lots of errands shoved into not a lot of time. Reading has gotten shoved into the backburner, and we haven’t had a lot of time to spend just quietly on the sofa together. That lack of time and reading time leads […]
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Enríquez loves a twist ending, and ghosts and horrors found in unlikely places.
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood
I came late to the work of Dorothy Parker and I came to it in a piecemeal way that I think many modern readers come to it. Honestly, I knew more about the saga of Parker’s mortal remains being stored in a filing cabinet for decades than I did about her.
Brother, I’m Dying
It’s really a story of two fathers, since it was her uncle that became her father when Danticat was left behind by her parents as they established themselves in America.
War
I was excited to read War — not because I’m a big fan of Céline, but because it’s a small piece of lost history that didn’t actually end up being lost. Now, all they need to find is a copy of Tod Browning’s London After Midnight.
2024’s Favourites
A New Tradition Maybe? This year the holiday season proved strangely elusive, and then, when it finally felt like it arrived, it was fraught with problems. Wesker had a bad weigh in. First, my lovely spouse was sick, then I fell ill and am still not well two weeks later. There were so many blizzards. […]
The Mystery Guest
It starts with a tone that is mundane but bitingly humorous as Bouillier tries to convince himself that he has let go of the mystery of the end of the relationship with the caller. He does a poor job of it.
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali focusses on a group of mostly foreign officials and journalists that are residing at a hotel in Kigali and gathering around the pool. They are aware that some kind of catastrophe is coming and lamenting the lack of care that the world has shown when it comes to Africa in general and Rwanda in specific — even though a lot of the conflicts in the country are due to colonialism and its aftermath.
This House of Grief
A good non-fiction book is just as complicated to write as a fiction one and includes a mastery of many of the same elements. Writing style, writing technique, tone, and description have to be both well done and exist in an ideal balance. If so, then even a boring subject can be compelling. But, if not, even an enthralling subject can be completely dry and unreadable.