When I was in elementary school, I read many, many books on monsters and the paranormal. Books about ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, mummies, werewolves...and vampires. Outside of books, there wasn't a lot to see with vampires at the time. You might catch classic Universal monster movies or the later, bloodier Hammer horror movies on late night TV (assuming you could convince your parents to let you stay up that late).
Jonathan Miles crafts three separate stories in this novel of loss and desire. Micah and Talmadge are freegan lovers who invite an old friend into their New York City squat and their dumpster diving lifestyle. Dr. Elwin Cross wants his wife back, wants his father to be whole again and swims through his grief with 100 extra pounds and a compassionate heart. And Dave Masoli gathers debt and repels the love of his trophy wife Sarah and her wounded daughter.
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume I is a creative, charming compilation of 1-5 sentence stories, poems, and artwork. The dainty book features 67 of the more than 8500 contributions originally submitted for the volume. Some made me laugh, others made me pause and reflect, and I kept flipping back to certain illustrations just to savor them a little longer. My favorite tiny story:
Much has been made of this show, more than a decade old and canceled before it even finished its first season.
With good reason.
Even suffering from executive meddling, where the episodes were aired out of order and the time slot randomly changed without notice, Firefly built a die-hard group of fans. They even leveraged their passion into a movie to wrap up the loose ends. Why are the Browncoats so fanatical?
These poignant and lightly humorous episodes are based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs about midwifery in East London in the 1950's. The nurses and nuns that run Nonnatus House are well developed, and I especially adore nurse Chummy Browne’s fish out of water storylines.
If you knew the precise time the moon would collide with a meteor would you pull out your binoculars, pop some popcorn, and pull up a lawn chair for the best show of your life? If you knew the moon would be struck quickly by the meteor but then slowly move closer and closer to the earth would you fear for you life? If you knew the moon's imposing presence in the sky would produce deadly earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes that wipe out millions of people would you still have hope? If you knew the middle of summer would soon turn to a blistering winter would yo
The London Eye Mystery is about a peculiar moment in time where a young boy named Salim steps into one of the 32 pods of the infamous London Eye but never steps off. His cousins Ted & Kat saw him get on. He turned around and waved to each of them. Ted and Kat didn't move. The waited, watched, and even counted as the pod slowly made it's way up, up, up, up up then down, down, down, down, down. After 30 stretched out minutes, Salim's pod was back to where it started. The doors opened and people filed out -- everyone except Salim.
Of the six and a half albums released since the resurrection of Guided By Voices in 2011, The Bears for Lunch is arguably the strongest (with 2014’s Cool Planet a close second). There is an energy and playfulness in a lot of these tunes that's lacking in the other albums. "Dome Rust" and "Finger Gang" are prime examples of the kind of oddball hookiness Robert Pollard, GBV’s lead songwriter, has mastered for decades. “Amorphous Surprise” continues in this giddy, surrealist vein.
Darrow has the most dangerous job on Mars. He is the helldiver of Lycos, running the drill deep underground that mines Mars for valuable natural resources. Helldivers to not generally live long lives, like his father who died when he was a child. But Darrow has other plans, he is going to make something of himself, and his clan. But he can only rise so far, the caste system of society keeps his people down. They are Reds, deemed to be good at nothing but hard labor. They are ruled over by the Blues, Greys, and at the top...the Golds, the apex of human evolution.
The companion novel to Saints, this book looks at the same situation from a different angle. Little Bao has grown up reenacting his favorite Chinese operas and looking up to his father. When his father is hobbled by European colonists, Bao's older brothers take over the family, relegating Bao to the role of little brother. In secret he trains with a martial arts master, and quickly out paces his brothers.
