Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a difficult job of trying to make up for the horrid prequels while also capturing the spirit that fans loved in the original trilogy. I believe it did it, even it wasn’t the best movie of 2015. It was one of the most...

Persuasion by Jane Austen Pages: 260 Genre: Classics Published: 1818 Link: Amazon | Powell’s You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own...

This was a completely unnecessary remake. When it began it showed Julianne Moore as Carrie’s mother, Margaret White, giving birth to Carrie and almost killing her immediately. That gave me hope that it might add a little more backstory to the movie from the book that the 1976 version left...

When I heard that Matt Damon would be playing astronaut Mark Watney, I thought he was perfectly cast. I knew he could portray a guy who could figure out how to survive on his own, while also being able to show the emotional effect it would have on a...

Crimson Peak is a beautiful movie that does not know what it wants to be — haunted house ghost story or twisted family drama. Based on the trailer and it coming from Guillermo del Toro, I was expecting it to be spooky and scary, but it wasn’t....

The episode starts off with teams learning at the pit stop that the leg isn’t finished. Before they take off racing again, Phil asked them if they wanted to donate money to charity. All the teams gave all the cash they had on them. The Paparazzi were the only team...

Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan Pages: 416 Genre: Literary Fiction Published: 2002 Link: Amazon | Powell’s Gould’s Book of Fish has won many awards. It has been lauded with great praise for its magic realism, and while I did find Flanagan’s way with words quite lyrical,...

‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King Pages: 439 Genre: Horror Published: 1975 Going into reading ‘Salem’s Lot after finishing Carrie, I was expecting to be scared. Parts of Carrie were creepy and I thought since this was King’s second novel that he would build upon it to actually scare me. It was about vampires,...

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith Pages: 455 Genre: Mystery Published: 2014 A Cormoran Strike Novel In The Silkworm, the second novel from J.K. Rowling under her pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, the private detective, Cormoran Strike is not so desperate as he was in the first novel. After solving the mystery of the famous model’s murder,...

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer Pages: 208 Genre: Science Fiction Published: 2014 Part One of the Southern Reach Trilogy Series Annihilation falls into a science fiction realm that is parts dystopian, surrealism, and horror. Area X is one part of a continent where the laws of nature do not act like expected. Human civilization...