Washington Black by Canadian writer Esi Eugyan is, quite simply one of the most exquisitely, beautifully well-written books you will ever read about one of the most horrifying things imaginable. A recounting of one remarkable young man’s journey from the sweat-and-toil cane fields of Barbados, rife with aristocratic indulgence and Continue Reading
Books
Hot Dog Girl – can a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator find love?
SNAPSHOTElouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way: She’s landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog. Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Continue Reading
Book review: A Love Story for Bewildered Girls by Emma Morgan
To hear Disney, Hallmark or a thousand other purveyors of romantic dreamscapes tell it, all we want it to fall headlong into someone’s arms, surrender ourselves to them and live, fairytale-like, happily ever after. It’s a captivating idea, that love could be that all-consuming and satisfying, that everything we’ve ever Continue Reading
Book review: Shattermoon by Dominic Dulley
Dashing vicariously across the galaxy at literally the speed of light with a protagonist has to be one of the great pleasures of reading a great soap operatic sci-fi novel. Against a backdrop of an impossibly vast and dispersed empire or idealistic groupings of planets, our hero (woman, man alien Continue Reading
Grab a marmalade sandwich! Paddington is heading to the small screen
SNAPSHOT The show will see the bear writing to Aunt Lucy from Windsor Gardens. Each episode will open and close with Paddington’s letters as he tells Aunt Lucy what he has learned about life through the day’s new adventure. (synopsis by We Got This Covered) I love him when I Continue Reading
Book review: Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin
Romantic comedies are a beguiling creation. Suffused with more hope and promise than an excited five-year-old running to their first day of school, awash with the kind of romantic view of life that makes you think everything is going to be okay come what may, and propelled by the sense Continue Reading
Don’t think you like Green Eggs and Ham? Try them, try them, and you may!
SNAPSHOT The story of Green Eggs and Ham is like a postmodern Plains, Trains and Automobiles through the whimsical world of Dr. Seuss. Sam rescues the rare Chickeraffe from the Glurfsburg Zoo, hides it in a briefcase, and attempts to make his way to Meepville where he can charter a Continue Reading
Book review: The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
One of humanity’s great contradictions has, and I suspect, always will be, our ability to dream big but never quite deliver on all the glitteringly-promising hopes and dreams. It’s not that we don’t get there at all; take a look around at the technological prowess of the world and you Continue Reading
Mary Poppins quits! Funny or Die and Kristen Bell have fun with P. L. Travers iconic character
It won’t be immediately obvious from Disney’s 1964 classic Mary Poppins, although Julie Andrews is no pushover in the role, but P. L. Travers much-loved creation is quite the no-nonsense nanny. Caring and dedicated to the welfare of her charges she may be, but she also not inclined to suffer Continue Reading
Author Annalee Newitz takes us on an alternate adventure to The Future of Another Timeline
SNAPSHOT A dark thriller from Annalee Newitz about the lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love. In a modern-day United States that’s just a step away from our own, time travel is possible. But a secret war is brewing over access to history. Tess is a geologist desperately Continue Reading