Coffee Sunday: New Directions
I should call this Sniffles Sunday. On Thursday, I became sick with a spring bug. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, and I spent most of my time since Thursday in bed. That […]
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez
Memories of My Melancholy Whores begins with its protagonist and narrator declaring the objectionable goal of wanting to have sex with a teenaged virgin. It’s the gift he wants to give himself for his ninetieth […]
Coffee Sunday: The Kobo Aura E-Reader
My Nook crashed earlier this month. For that reason, as well as others, I’m mad at Barnes and Noble right now. Since they have been my favorite bookstore for decades, I’m hoping they can pull […]
The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry
Where do you begin with a writer like Larry McMurtry? His name, I fear, is not a household name, but his work–from The Last Picture Show (1966) to Lonesome Dove (1985) to the movie Brokeback […]
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
At my first creative writing class, the grad student who taught it asked how many of us write fiction. All hands went up. How many of you consider yourself fiction writers? A few hands dropped, […]
Short Story Review: “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
When literary scholars think of Southern Writers, they tend to first think of William Faulkner. Though Southern Literature had been around since Colonial times, in the post-Civil War era, Faulkner gave it new life and […]
Book Review: Cinnamon by Samar Yazbek
“Poetry,” one of my literature professors had said long ago in class, “is about mixed emotions.” She was talking about Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” a short poem loaded with both positive and negative imagery […]
Movie Review: Avengers: Endgame
When I went to Avengers: Endgame last weekend, I had planned on my typical thousand or so words review, but having seen the movie, I decided instead to write a shorter review. What can I […]
Book Review: Piercing by Ryu Murakami
Piercing begins with a chilling scene and intensifies from there. It’s an unrelenting, violent novel that refuses to turn a blind eye to its characters’ deranged compulsions. It’s a novel about compulsions, but not the […]
Movie Review: Cléo from 5 to 7
Like with any art form, film is very versatile. Over the hundred plus years of filmmaking, directors had experimented with style, substance, moods, plots, and characters. They had joined movements. They had struggled to create […]