About stories of all kinds
Aldous Huxley is of course best known for his heart-chilling vision of a hellish dystopian future in Brave New World. I can’t say I really loved that novel, though I recognise its societal importance “so much the more as we see the day approaching,” so to speak. However, this selection of novellas by Huxley are… Continue reading The Seventh Day of Christmas: After the Fireworks
Since spending one New Year’s Eve reading Sherlock Holmes into the New Year, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has joined Charles Dickens as seasonal reading for me. I began re-reading the complete Sherlock Holmes in December 2020, and while I haven’t gotten to reading more of it this December, I am reviewing the first collection of… Continue reading The Sixth Day of Christmas: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Okay, now that we’ve been sufficiently impressed with one sequel to a really popular book, time for a disappointment. I am of course speaking of A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab, which happened to combine three major things that I hate. And unfortunately, the writing and characters weren’t enough to save it. Two mutually… Continue reading The Fifth Day of Christmas: A Gathering of Shadows
I decided to read Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo after being moderately impressed with Six of Crows, and being kind of dragged into the imagination of the Shadow and Bone Netflix series. Having vaguely known that Crooked Kingdom had something to do with the dreggy Crows managing to stage a market coup, I was sufficiently… Continue reading The Fourth Day of Christmas: Crooked Kingdom
This book, Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire, repeatedly caught my eye since I first encountered its alluring cover but I never carved out time for it until coming across it again at the library. Walking to the check-out counter, I knew it was going to be trash. But it kept popping up, so I finally… Continue reading The Third Day of Christmas: Beautiful Disaster
I picked this book up, containing two novels by Louisa May Alcott, with the understanding that the first listed story was a sort of first draft of A Long Fatal Love Chase, as its alternate title was A Modern Mephistopheles. However, despite sharing a similar concept, the stories actually diverge wildly enough in their characters… Continue reading The Second Day of Christmas: A Modern Mephistopheles and Taming a Tartar
Though one of the first of the modern fantasy novels, T.H. White’s creations of modern Arthurian myth seem to have been relegated to mere “children’s literature” in a way that even C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia haven’t been. Which designation, aside from being patently inaccurate, does an injustice to the depth and complexity of White’s… Continue reading The First Day of Christmas: The Once and Future King
I don’t know if anyone is aware of this “really old movie,” but The Fellowship of the Ring is a 2001 film adaptation of the 1954 book of the same name by J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is the first volume of the larger work The Lord of the Rings, which helped define an entire genre… Continue reading May the Fellowship Be Unbroken, By and By: A Lord of the Rings Appreciation Post
Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds. Now she's awakened a nightmare. During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning… Continue reading To Sleep (Perchance to Dream) in a Sea of Stars: Review
Title trends come and go. Sometimes they’re a phrase—we were all there for the “A noun of noun and noun” young adult fantasy trend. Is it over yet? It felt like a bad case of déjà vu every time I walked into the YA section there for a while. Like, wait, didn’t this book come… Continue reading Titles on Trend: Eight Books of Life and Death and Full Names
Fictitiously Yours 