“El frio me a tormenta” or the cold torments me, is the chorus of Making Movies pulsing rock song Tormenta. It’s about missing your family and wanting to visit your home, and family at Christmas. That’s something that many immigrants in the US, who fear they will not be let back into the US, don’t have the [...]
Let’s get the Twilight comparison out of the way first. No, these vampires don’t sparkle. They’re smart, what they do isn’t pretty, and the vileness of the act of drinking human blood is out there in the open. Illustrator Raphael Albuquerque knows how to draw a beautiful woman, a western vista, and a hideous creature of the damned. [...]
Last week, I reviewed The Magician King, fussing and moaning and worrying about sequels. Dune Messiah embodies the core of those fears. It’s an unnecessary slog through what happens after all the mammoth problems and conflicts of the previous book have been resolved. One of the central themes of this space epic is dealing with [...]
American Gods is as good a book as you can hope to read. It tells a massive story with the scope and gravitas to encompass gods and nations, but it remains so specific that you feel as if your friends are living it. The locations are real. Gaiman lovingly describes the Great Lakes states. Peru, [...]
These are tough times. Everyone is being asked to make more from less and stretch dollars further. Under these circumstances travel plans often get pruned, delayed or just flat out canceled. One of the oldest ways to save money when traveling is to opt out of train fair and make it a road trip. Looking [...]
Sequels Sequels and fantasy go together like hot dogs and grilled onions. The fantasy genre, which requires world-building and myths, has room for huge word counts and long volumes. Still, I carry a small suspicion of sequels in any genre, they make too much sense from a marketing perspective to be motivated primarily from a [...]
Eyes and ears need training. A photographer can see a beautiful pattern in a heap of scraps; a musician can pick out a subtle difference in pitch that would be impossible for the audience to pick up on. Travelers are untrained in the sights and sounds of the place they are visiting, especially if they [...]
The Performance I listened to this book on CD’s borrowed from the Lincoln Square’s Sulzer Library and, first, let me highlight the performance of the actor, David Oyelowo. He doesn’t need my praise to lift his career, Oyelowo has gone on to act in many successful television shows and films. As far as I can [...]
The fantasy genre has a small but committed group of superfans. There are shelves and shelves of stories about magic and elves that no one but the deeply committed fan has ever heard of. But, the canon has its crossover hits. The Magicians takes many of those beloved works (particularly Harry Potter and The Chronicles [...]
“Read a lot, write a lot.” This is the mantra of a good writer or, at least, the one I stole from Stephen King. He says that a good writer should read between 70 and 80 books a year and I take him at his word. In chess, if you never study the masters, you will be [...]
