Apocalyptic fiction is not a new genre. One could argue that it is one of literature's oldest genres. Ragnarok. The Revelations of John. The (often embellished) stories about the Mayan Long Count calendar and the year 2012. Whatever the story, people have always had a...
Weird Fiction is a difficult genre to describe, but you know it when you read it. Stories that get categorized as Weird Fiction often take place in a setting that is like our world, but is not our world. They feature characters that are like people we know, yet are...
One of my favorite books from recent years is Black Leopard, Red Wolf (BLRW) by Marlon James, a fantasy novel with sharp, African twists on traditional fantasy tropes. There is a lot I liked about it, but the thing that intrigues me most is that it is the first of a...
Jamaican-born author Marlon James has recently become one of my favorites. I have blogged about his novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf in the past, and will someday soon blog about the sequel that (finally!) came out yesterday. I also recently discovered that he does a...
The title of this post was my first thought after reading this wonderful, bewildering, and somewhat depressing novella. For such a short story, Rachel Ingalls' Mrs. Caliban has so many holes in its plot, and possible interpretations for these gaps, that I am not...
(Spoiler Warning: I am going to discuss some minor spoilers from Gideon the Ninth.) After reading Maggie's post about Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, I finally picked it up off of my virtual "to-read" stack and listened to the audiobook. I loved it. Muir's writing is...
Confession: I have never really been into super hero comics and stories. The last Marvel Comic Universe movie I saw was the first Captain America. And I was never really into the X-Men or Spider-Man movies and comics either. But Alan Moore's Watchmen is not an...
I don't normally read memoirs, but I did recently for a book club. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it! We read Phuc Tran's Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In, a coming-of-age memoir in which Tran describes his life growing...
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball is a slightly unusual sports book. I've read plenty of books about sports and sports figures, and a common gripe I have with them is that they are usually written by reporters. They may...
I have read several retelling's of old tales and myths over the past few years, but I cannot think of a better one that I've read than Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Song of Achilles is a partial retelling of Homer's Iliad narrated by Patroclus, Achilles'...