I Can’t Go On

Please tell Tom Clancy that technical details about weaponry and submarine mechanics is not story telling. I’m 200 pages in and half of what I’ve read amounts to military tech porn. This novel had potential. A Soviet submarine captain goes rouge, defecting to America, after an incompetent, communist (I repeat myself) doctor kills his wife

Daily Life In Ancient Rome

When studying ancient Rome, it is useful to pay particular attention to the first and second century A.D., a time when Roman wealth and influence reached its height. Historians are lucky that this generation of the Empire has bestowed us with the most comprehensive of records detailing Roman life.  Daily Life In Ancient Rome by the

Happy Halloween

Ulalume by Edgar Allen Poe The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year: It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It

Please Write Pretty

Personally, I’ve never liked dialect in novels (not even the classics like Hick Finn). I read to escape the artless language of everyday life. So, lose the verisimilitude and write pretty, please!

Literature

Second only to indoor plumbing as the greatest invention of man.

Desert Island Reading

If I had to face the proverbial ‘stuck on a desert island with a small library of my choice’ dilemma, there is not a doubt about the books I would choose to bring along with me to my sandy purgatory. My first choice – of course – would be the King James Bible. After that,

Great Artists Steal

I remember reading Don Quixote and thinking about what a great writer Cervantes was when I came to this passage: “Nevertheless,” said the traveller, “if I remember rightly, I think I have read that Don Galaor, the brother of the valiant Amadis of Gaul, never had any special lady to whom he might commend himself,

#1 – Bright Lights, Big City BOOK REVIEW

Do you remember when you first broke away from the familiar rituals and warm safety of your parent’s home? Before your departure, every person you’d ever known was a rural, midwestern white person or a second generation, Americanized Mexican. After 18 years of this arrangement, you began to believe that unworldy, small-town folks with a

When the Pitch Is Better Than the Real Thing – A Partial Review of the Book Crow Killer

Novels that fail to satisfy our expectations deserve a spot next to bad cigars and unrequited love as representative of life’s most painful letdowns. Brief backstory – I’m one of these nuts that’s actually sort of enjoying quarantine. Working from home means more time with loved ones, staying up/sleeping in later, saying goodbye to a