Reviews

Editor’s note: A longer version of this piece on John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich originally appeared on “Critical Mass,” the National Book Critics Circle blog (see http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/Its_Not_About_the_Car_John_Updikes_Rabbit_is_Rich). Re-posted here by kind permission of the NBCC.

Often maligned as a self-indulgent “progressive” rock band by critics, King Crimson over the last 40 years has proven several times that an exploratory approach to music doesn’t have to equate with wretched excess.

“Thrak,” the band’s 1995 effort, is one of its masterpieces. The title track and “VROOM” demonstrate the group’s talent for playing very aggressive pieces, but other songs here, including “One Time” and “Walking On Air,” evince a gentle beauty that King Crimson’s harsher detractors always have overlooked.

Author Daniel Woodrell was born in Springfield, Missouri and graduated from KU before heading over to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently lives in the Ozarks and this is his second book to be adapted to film. The main character, Ree Dolly, is a scrappy teenager who works hard to care for her two younger brothers and their mentally ill mother.

Should you try to save a people who hate you? That's the question asked in SquareEnix's Final Fantasy XIII, available on both PS3 and Xbox 360.

What you take out of this game really depends on what you expect from it. If you're looking for a freeplay sandbox, turn around and walk away. If you're looking for excellent character development, pull up a chair and settle down for the ride.

Hometown by Tracy Kidder

Barbara Pym is one of my favorite authors. Even though her novels are primarily set in rural English villages in the mid-twentieth century, they are still relevant today with their social observations and comic phrasing. Pym always wrote about what she knew. She lived in London during her working life, then retired to live with her sister in an Oxfordshire village. Her life there consisted of church, gardening, local history and country walks.

Warren Brown’s Cakelove is not your average cake baking book.  He doesn’t decorate standard cakes with intricately carved fondant or instruct you to dump a bottle of pink sprinkles on top to make a birthday cake for a princess.  Most of the

Sometimes, as a book reviewer, it's best to just get out of the way as quickly as possible. Such is the case with this review of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, one of the great ghost novels in the English language.

It had been awhile since I'd seen this 1982 horror flick, so I cued it up recently -- and laughed till I had tears in my eyes.

I had forgotten how funny this movie anthology of five tales really is. Yes, it was directed by George A. Romero, who achieved his greatest fame with truly chilling films such as "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead." But "Creepshow" is played mostly for grins. Stephen King wrote the screenplay, inspired by the horror comics he read as a kid in the 1950s.

Poor Arthur C. Clarke.