Quick Take: Stephen King’s FAIRY TALE
I was a teenager when I first read Stephen King. The book was Salem’s Lot and the damn thing s ...
ANDOR, Random Thoughts: Politics and Character Arcs
War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means. ON WAR, by General ...
Wrestling with the Fallen Angel: Midnight Mass as Catholic Horror
Two men—a priest and a recovering alcoholic— sit in a church rec center on folding chairs discussing ...
Malcolm Guite’s Grail Quest Ballad Cycle
I was only last year introduced to the books, blog, and “A Spell in the Library” YouTube ...
“My cause of death today is Beauty”: Mr. Sunshine
“Yesterday seemed like a distant past, today felt unfamiliar and tomorrow was terrifying. It was a t ...
In Defense of Woundedness, of Failure, and of Frodo: A Personal Reflection with Tolkien’s Letters
[ALERT: If you are not familiar with the end of The Lord of the Rings, do not continue…] I originall ...
Re-reading “Foucault’s Pendulum” in the Age of Q-Anon: Pt. 2 – Ur-Fascism and the Russia-Ukraine Connection
Apologies, but work on my little blog series on Re-reading Foucault’s Pendulum in the Age of QAnon h ...
All Relationships are Precious: A First Encounter with K-Drama and “My Mister”
My Mister opens in a typical office setting, bright and bleak as a winter afternoon, everyone absorb ...
Archive81 and Cosmic Horror
Archive81 proved a surprise Netflix hit, a slowburn horror series that wears a number of influences ...
Chill, this is Ashland!
Ashland, Oregon is a small, artsy “destination town” in southern Oregon, just north of t ...
Re-reading “Foucault’s Pendulum” in the Age of QAnon – Pt. 1, The Plan
I just finished my third or fourth reading of Umberto Eco‘s classic esoteric suspense thriller ...
The Day I Fell in Love
January 18 is Winnie-the-Pooh Day…Huzzah! I’m one of those folks who remembers little of ...
Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi: Some Initial Reflections
“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.” ~ Piranesi, pg. 5 I warn the reade ...
Worldbuilding with Specialists, Polymaths, and Dilettantes
The pace at which scientists are breaking down their foci of expertise into increasingly narrower fi ...
The Genius of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
“Two magicians shall appear in England…” I tend to catch the tail-end of trends, like an enthu ...
Epic Storytelling at 10 Cents a pop
My family home was a boxy old turn-of-the-century three-story turned-student rooming house two block ...
Mark Your Calendars, because “Two Magicians Shall Appear in England…”
…and those Magicians are Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke. (Surely there are author-magicians, just as ...
Arresting Strangeness: The Green Knight
This will be a short post, no more than an update. (Honestly I don’t think I’ve tried po ...
Remembering Roger Rees, and his Nicholas Nickleby
“Is this a theatre?” whispered Smike, in amazement; “I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.” ...
Current Delights and Distractions in Genre Fiction
Well, I have promised the start of a long Dickens reading marathon, beginning with his earliest publ ...