Welcome to my weird world!
Back when Turning Red was released, in my opinion a superb, important and groundbreaking animated film, critic Sean O’Connell said he felt he couldn’t relate to the problems the female protagonist was facing, and outrage was sparked over the review, calling it sexist and socially blind. The outrage was warranted. The entertainment industry expects girls... Continue Reading →
I should've caved to my gut and tried out Mindy McGinnis' works long ago. This time, McGinnis' work is based off of the Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Cask of Amontillado, which I'd never heard about in my life before, and McGinnis kind-of kind-of-not-so secretly puts Amontillado as the name for this grungy American... Continue Reading →
When I started The House In The Cerulean Sea, I was just starting my new job. Such ironic timing. The big hero of this book is a man named Linus Baker who started working for DICOMY when he was my age today. DICOMY is Department In Charge of Magical Youth. There’s also a DICOMA, for... Continue Reading →
I’ll have to check the statistics, but I think this sequel to A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder might just be the best mystery novel I’ve ever read. In the last book, straight-A good-girl-type Pippa Fitz-Amobi decided on her high school capstone project to investigate a five-year-old killing of high-school sweetheart Andie Bell, the perpetrator... Continue Reading →
It's such a shame when an instalment in a book series you love disappoints you so much. It makes you feel like now, if you recommend the other books, you're now setting readers up for them to care enough to have to deal with a slog. In this case, The Shadow Slog might be a... Continue Reading →
About four years ago, I picked up the first Three Dark Crowns and finished it exhausted and frustrated. I gave it a generous single one-star rating. When you advertise your book as a Hunger-Games fight to the death and spend 80% of it going over the lives of the competitors, their lovers, and the lovers... Continue Reading →
This is so not your average biography. When I was 10 years old, thanks to Gary Paulson, I had a burning desire to build a shelter in the forest and sleep in it for a night. And Into The Wild reminded me of that desire. Into the Wild is a 1996 biography that had slipped... Continue Reading →
Little note. This is my first review in months. Feels good to be doing it again. I was reading this book while watching The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, and my thoughts were “What am I doing wasting my time watching that movie?” while I had about a half dozen other things on the... Continue Reading →
Honestly, why couldn't they have just listened to fans and reunited with the baby all grown up? Were the negative reviews of the last instalment not hinting enough they were going down the wrong path? So, the reason Scrat, the beloved prehistoric rodent always hurting himself to get his somehow-irreplaceable treasure is not in this... Continue Reading →
Last summer, the upcoming movie adaptation of this book, with Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendehlson as the stars, was filming for two days at a local conservation park. I've gone on walks through there thousands of times. It was all over our local news that this was happening. The day before filming, my mother insisted... Continue Reading →
William J. McGinn 