• Comics Read

    Saga, Volume 1

    Saga, Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan Illustrated By: Fiona Staples Published: 2012 Publisher: Image Comics Collects: issues #1 – #6 This is a space fantasy, I guess, which is actually a fairly unique genre for me. I’m not sure I’ve read much that involves space travel, magic, aliens, and swordplay. I guess it’s a little Star Wars in that regard, but more on the fantasy side. It’s also a little Romeo and Juliet, having two star-crossed lovers from opposing races in a long-running war. She was a jail warden and he was a prisoner, but now they have a newborn together and are trying to avoid the armies of…

  • Books Read

    The Serpent of Venice: A Novel

    The Serpent of Venice: A Novel by Christopher Moore Published: 2014 This is the sequel to Moore’s 2009 novel Fool, but only loosely so. The jester Pocket, with his monkey Jeff and his virile giant of an apprentice Drool, land in Venice on a mission for his queen. He is to try and stop the merchants of the city from orchestrating a new crusade in an attempt to profit from it. The mission goes wrong almost immediately, and it then turns into a tale of revenge and intrigue. Fool was a comedic retelling of King Lear, and this novel takes on The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Poe’s The Cask…

  • Current Challenges

    The Classics Club – Year Two

    The anniversary of my signing on to The Classics Club flew past without my noticing a couple months back. I am now twenty-three books into my fifty book goal and there’s three years left, so that should be no problem at all. The list so far: The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues by Plato (Sometime BC) Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (1623) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813) Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard(1885) The Strange Case…

  • Literature

    May in Review

    Books Acquired: The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell The Magicians by Lev Grossman A Cook’s Tour – In Search of the Perfect Meal by Anthony Bourdain Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin Rebus’s Scotland by Ian Rankin The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret…