When I read something good, you’ll be the first to know

When you’re in the mood for a ghost story…

February 9, 2012

I'm a big fan of ghost stories, even though I hardly ever read them. The problem is, there aren’t many good ones around. So recently I picked up a copy of Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House. And then Richard Matheson’s Hell House, which borrows enough from Jackson’s book to be almost an [...]

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“Crooked Letter” is a classic

January 17, 2012

Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is one of those crime novels where it’s not all about the crime itself. I appreciate that, especially since the crime in question is the disappearance of an attractive young woman. And then another, 25 years later. Vanishing women are so common in this genre that most books using [...]

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Dark Tower: I finally found the exit

January 12, 2012

When you’re coming to the end of a story that exceeds 4,000 pages, it’s hard to say with a straight face that you didn’t really care for it. Four thousand pages, after all: That’s a lot of missed opportunities to stop reading. So I’ll say this of Stephen King’s Dark Tower septology, 34 years in [...]

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If you could turn back time

November 16, 2011
11/22/63 back cover

It’s useless to wonder what you would do if you could go back in time, because that’s impossible. But seriously, what would you do if you could go back in time? For Jake Epping, in Stephen King’s 11/22/63, it’s not a hard call: he’d save a few lives, up to and including that of John [...]

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Thoroughly modern vampires

October 28, 2011
nosferatu vampire the strain

Look, you either like vampire horror or you don’t, and I can sympathize with both points of view on this. But it’s nearly Halloween. So after reading The Strain, I’m inclined to give the genre the benefit of the doubt again — as long as the vampires remain monstrous and not the objects of ludicrous [...]

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An old-school ghost story for Halloween

September 30, 2011
the seance by john harwood

Judging by displays in big-box stores all over this great land, Halloween is just around the corner. The other day I was in Lowe’s and there was a life-size animatronic witch on display. The witch would periodically move one arm in a spastic way, then deliver an annoying cackle and some phrase that was supposed [...]

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Here’s the booze; the bottle’s extra

September 29, 2011

I was about to make a few remarks regarding my Nook e-reader, but then Jeff Bezos announces all the new Kindles and renders my thoughts even more irrelevant than usual. I am beginning to hate gadgets of all kinds, simply because it’s impossible to be content with the device you have for more than a [...]

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History that’s better than the legend

September 21, 2011
george armstrong custer

When I was a kid we used to have some Eddy Arnold albums around the house, one of which contained the track “Battle of the Little Big Horn.” As a song, it’s mawkish and lame; as history, it’s hilarious. There are references to muskets and cannon balls (neither were used), “old General Custer” (the man [...]

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Hey, Steve. I’m back.

September 18, 2011
stephen king

I used to love Stephen King’s books. But until getting Under the Dome on my Nook last week, I don’t think I’d read anything he’s written during the last 10 or 12 years — except for his excellent On Writing two or three years ago. It wasn’t a conscious decision to boycott his later work. [...]

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James Bond for the beach

August 8, 2011

I suppose Carte Blanche is what they call a beach book: The kind you might enjoy, but keep on the down-low lest others accuse you of reading lowbrow crap. It is lowbrow crap, of course, just as all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were. And maybe it’s worse that this one wasn’t even written [...]

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