Welcome to my weird world!
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 →
When Simon Kinberg directed and released Dark PhoeniX three years ago, it was seen as a ginormously weak sendoff for the X-Men franchise, if it ends up a sendoff at all. It was definitely inferior to Logan by a mile, but I didn't find it that bad. I actually gave it a B. I found... Continue Reading →
I truly do not understand why prison escape fiction is so rare. While if you don't have an outside point of view you may have a small claustrophobic setting, escaping from jail and running from the cops is a suspenseful, odds-against-you storyline that's so inviting for the roller coaster ride it's no wonder the public... Continue Reading →
I've said in past reviews I'm not a fan of short stories, because they tend to not be long enough to have us fully understand and love the characters, and if we do end up growing to like them, their time with us is over too fast. But I only say that to stories so... Continue Reading →
The sort of undercover work the protagonist does in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is enough to make James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and even Hercule Poirot green with embarrassment at how many levels she is above their investigative skills, not the least of which is she's still just a teenager, doing a case that... Continue Reading →
I ended up reading the illustrated/photographed edition of this book, something which majorly contributed to my enjoyment or fascination. I'm not completely sure I'd have given this book the same grade if it weren't for the photos of real-life old paintings, ruins, museums, fields and sights that show up helping us feel we're there even... Continue Reading →
William J. McGinn 