I know this is the second time I’ve mentioned Aaron Sorkin in the past few days, but that’s only because I’m rewarding myself for applying to grad school by letting myself watch episodes of Sports Night and The West Wing. Anyway, I’m watching Sports Night and this is the dialogue that just went by: Jeremy: This, you’re gonna love! This is maybe the most important piece of boxing writing ever done. Casey: And what with all the important pieces of boxing writing to choose from– Jeremy: The Marquis of Queensberry Rules…written by? Casey: The Marquis of Queensberry? Jeremy: No, boxing…
12 CommentsAuthor: Gin Jenny
The Wordy Shipmates is about the Puritans, John Winthrop and his lot, who came to America, and all the stuff they did. Vowell admires their courage and intelligence without giving them a pass on all the things we don’t like about Puritans – the intransigence, the praying for American Indians to die of plague, etc. It’s more of an essay collection than a history book, with Vowell speaking to her own life and how she has found strength in the writings of the Puritans, plus some fairly predictable party-line remarks on American politics. Plus all the stuff about the Puritans.…
27 CommentsGo watch “The Waters of Mars” and then come back here so we can have spoiler-filled comments about all how bleak and scary and crazy it all was, and how excited we all are that John Simm is coming back again. (I am very very excited. I would even go so far as to say very very very excited. I love me some John Simm.) You may think that you have seen David Tennant put on some crazy eyes previously, but in fact you have never seen David Tennant do crazy eyes until you have seen “The Waters of Mars”. …
15 CommentsThere are only a very few books by Diana Wynne Jones that I don’t own, and here they are and this is why: 1. The Time of the Ghost. Written in 1981, right before Diana Wynne Jones went on her crazy winning streak made out of amazing brilliance and win, between 1981 and 1986, this is my very least by a lot favorite of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. I have read it over and over, and I have never managed to like it. 2. A Tale of Time City. Because I have only started liking it recently, and I have…
17 CommentsMary Russell is a (half?) Jewish (half?) American girl who takes up with Sherlock Holmes. Like him, she is brilliant and unemotional; she becomes his protégé at age fifteen, and they solve cases together. In The Beekeeper’s Apprentice they run up against a villain more villainous and clever than all the clever villainous villains heretofore encountered by Holmes (he says) (though obviously not because I have heard he got outwitted one time), and they work in tandem to thwart the villainously clever villain. This did not bother me because I have hardly read any Sherlock Holmes stories (apart from Hound…
26 CommentsWhoa, how did I not review this yet? I thought I had – but apparently I only thought about it, A LOT, and then forgot to do it because I was reading through the Amelia Peabody books. (Still fun!) The Magicians is about a boy called Quentin Coldwater who is obsessed with a series of books about a fictional land, Fillory. One day, he interviews for and gets into a school of magic, Brakebills, and he spends the next lots of years learning magic, and practicing magic, and eventually (is this spoilers? I feel like no, because you see it…
18 CommentsI like a bonfire! Sadly, the American fall holiday is Halloween, which does not entail bonfires. Candy, yes. Slutty costume versions of really strange things like bumblebees, yes. But no sparklers, very few sausages, and rarely fireworks or bonfires. And no burning effigies at all, unless Bonfire Night happens to coincide with the Bama game. Whenever Bonfire Night rolls around, I get nostalgic for the Little Grey Rabbit books. Did anyone else read these? They are charming – all about a rabbit and a hare and a squirrel that live together and have little adventures. In one book they go…
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