Category
books
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books
I Like My Stories Like I Like My Orange Juice - With Extra Pulp: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril Book Review
Paul Malmont’s love for the pulps bleeds through in every word on the page of his debut novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. From the setting to the characters, from the plot to the overall structure it is clear the author set out to create a loving paean to the long dead genre. The novel [...]
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books
Labyrinths Literal, Psychosexual, and Typographical: House of Leaves Book Review
02.25.08 | Permalink | 2 CommentsHouse of Leaves by Mark Danielewski is a ghost story without ghosts.
House of Leaves rolls its narrative out along two intersecting tracks and several levels of abstraction. You, the reader, hold the book in your hand and begin the tale told by Johnny Truant, an apprentice tattoo artist whose aimless carousing through the L.A. nightlife [...]
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Movies, books
Bear Fight! And Atheism… The Golden Compass Review
12.02.07 | Permalink | 3 CommentsThis past Saturday, I got a sneak preview showing of The Golden Compass. Based on the first book of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, this film is a pretty clear attempt to launch a young adult fantasy franchise of Potter-ian proportions. Unlike the Potter films, which I kind of like without ever having read [...]
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books
Obscenity and Paranoia: Lenny Bruce May Have Been Talking Dirty But I Barely Understood a Word
10.22.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments“That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid…”Lenny Bruce was a big part of making our culture what it is today. R.E.M said so. A fast-talking comedian of the early days of the counter-culture, his trials for obscenity in the early 1960s set the baseline [...]
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books
Saline Testicular Enhancement and the Modern Detective Story: A Review of Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis
This is a novel that will make you feel uncomfortable, at a conservative estimate, at least once in every ten pages. It might be a little squirm, a minor fidget, or a full-on scrotum (or other anatomically appropriate body part)-tightening wince that wracks your entire body. But make no mistake, Crooked Little Vein [...]
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books
The Secret? The Alchemist Sucks
09.09.07 | Permalink | 3 CommentsI’ve been occupying my transit time with the reading of novels and other books that have nothing to do with stare decisis and substantive law. For the last week or so, I’ve been pulling out my copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo.
This being San Francisco, at least three different people saw me reading it [...]
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