First published in The New England Magazine in 1892, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” has been a beloved addition to American literature and important entry in feminist prose. In 1899, Charlotte Perkins Gilman included in her collection titled The Yellow Wall-Paper. I first read the story in the 90s, as a student at Eastern Washington University,...
Say you live in San Francisco. You get up one day and decide to play with your binoculars. You went to the window and aimed them at Corona Heights, and there you saw a man on the summit waving at you. Curious, you decided to meet him and find what his deal was. You...
I have a connection, though a slight one, with the Hillside Stranglers. In 1979, while I have a student in Bellingham, Kenny Bianchi murdered Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder in that city. They were also students at Western Washington University. Though I didn’t know either of them, I remembered the somber days on the...
Though I read Girls Against God twice, I confess to you I don’t get it. So I am going to spend this review struggling to make sense of a novel I find nonsensical. And please know, when I say I don’t get it, I don’t mean I don’t like it, for I found it...
I don’t remember the name of the movie theater or even where in Denver it was located, since it was 1989 and 1990 when I lived there, but it was my favorite theater in the city because I saw the most interesting movies in it. I saw Kenneth Branagh play in Henry V, still...
I have a counterpoint to make, one that will dispute some online movie reviewers I like, who, without exception, enjoy Nosferatu. I didn’t enjoy it, but that said, I don’t why not. I mean, by all criteria that we judge movies—the directing, the acting, the atmosphere, etc—it was a good movie, maybe even excellent....
I cursed myself to finish every novel I begin. Sometimes, that is easy and thrilling, but over times, it becomes a chore. Operation Napoleon belongs to the latter group. But I finished the novel, and now I’m ready for my review. Here we go. When the Americans find a Nazi plane on a glacier...
I read Hallowe’en Party because of the Kenneth Branagh’s movie, A Haunting in Venice, which my research had identified as this novel the source. I have my doubts because the novel is set outside of London, rather than in Venice, it involves the killing of a thirteen-year-old girl, whereas the movie seems to people...
In May 2020, I began a project to review classic spy novels. I selected eleven books to review, and I went to Powell’s City of Books in Portland to buy them. I was so proud of myself! I expected the project would take a year or eighteen months or even two years to complete,...
I read The Girl of the Sea of Cortez as a comprise. I have always been fascinated with Peter Benchley’s novel The Deep; at least, I think I will like reading it. I haven’t read it, but I saw the Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset movie, about a couple vacation in Bermuda. Being scuba...
