reviews

The Emperor, His Clothes, and an Unpopular Opinion Author: V.E. Schwab France, 1714 – a desperate young woman makes a deal with the darkness to escape her provincial village, the expectations of marriage, and the work-a-day demands of life to gain immortality and adventure. But, of course, there’s a cost. While Addie will live forever, no one will ever remember her, and she can leave no mark of herself on the world. Her family, her friends, everyone she ever meets will forget her the moment she walks away. And the darkness will follow her through the centuries, taunting and demanding the [...]

Tales in the Time of Covid Author: Ben H. Winters What could be more perfect after a year of quarantine than some timely stories from one of my favorite authors, Ben Winters? Inside Jobs: Tales from a Time of Quarantine first showed up as a free Audible offering, and after reading about gangsters being foiled by a bad Zoom connection in the blurb, I knew I had to read (listen) to it. Inside Jobs is a very short offering, just three stories clocking in at two and a half hours (so not even a full hour per story), but it’s a [...]

A Beautiful Train Wreck Author: Emily Brontë I’d read this broody, gothic story a long time ago, but remembered little about it, other than a general sense of being underwhelmed. Yet, over the years people continued to steadily recommend Wuthering Heights to me, mostly because of my devotion to melancholy horror novels. So, as my classics kick progresses even further, I decided to revisit a classic I barely remembered and see if the second time was the charm. It was . . . and it wasn’t. Wuthering Heights is mistakenly sold as a tragic love story. It’s not. It’s essentially [...]