... that my quiet little suburban town has had its own George Floyd incident.

Several days ago, a Hispanic man named Mario Gonzales was (apparently) drunk in a public park. I make no apologies for him on this level; but he was, on the other hand, employed, supporting his four-year-old son, and the primary caretaker for his autistic brother.

I watched ( Read more... )

Some people just don't dig the Legion, and I understand that. You have to set aside a certain amount of rationality, logic, and even common sense to even accept the concept, and the execution is, at times, utterly whack. There are stories that are just downright embarrassing to Legion fans.

A couple of those are in this volume.But there are also a ( Read more... )

I bought this used book online for about (don't recall exactly) five dollars. It sat dutifully, if a bit sullenly, on my TBR shelf until its turn came. I opened it, turned to the title page and found that it was an inscribed copy: "For the students at Park Schoolwith best wishes - Susan coooper 1996". I don't suppose this makes it terribly valuable ( Read more... )

...the guilty-on-all-charges verdict in the matter of Derek Chauvin.

But I can't.

Because George Floyd is still dead.

And Daunte Wright is still dead.

And Breonna Taylor is still dead.

And Atatantiana Jefferson is still dead.

And Botham Jean is still dead.

And Philando Castile is still dead.

And Freddy Gray is still dead.

And Tamir Rice is still dead.

And  ( Read more... )

The best horror is about an ordinary person or people in extraordinary and untenable circumstances. (Of course, that applies to a lot of other fiction as well...) Billy Wiles is not quite an ordinary person, though he seems to be one: the day bartender at a local bar in Napa county. But four years ago, BIlly was a moderately successful beginning ( Read more... )

...and this is Stephen Hayes's most recent novel, a direct sequel to _Of Wheels and Witches_. It is now the Christmas holiday, which is summer in South Africa, and Jeffery and Catherine return from their various homes to Eerstelling, where they are soon reunited with their friend Janet. This is going to be pretty disjointed, because to summarize in ( Read more... )

This is sort-of a sequel to the author's _Of Wheels and Witches_. But where that was a children's book, _The Year of the Dragon_ is decidedly adult, and very much in the mold of Charles Williams.

It is late 1988 in South Africa, shortly before the fall of apartheid. Richard Rutherford, a lawyer, and his friend Denis Walters, an auctioneer, travel ( Read more... )

...what I really love?

I love opening my morning news sites and not dreading what That Idiot has done today. 

Stephen Hayes is an Orthodox deacon in Tshwane, South Africa. I must confess to a loose acquaintance with him, largely through online Inklings fandom. He self-published this book in 2014, and I feel terribly guilty about only now getting around to read it. In my defense, it disappeared when I sent it to my Kindle and I only recently figured out how ( Read more... )

In her lifetime, Flannery O'Connor published two novels and one short story collection, preparing a second collection for publication before she died. I have reviewed these individually.

There are, however, another five hundred plus pages of material here - longer than any two of her books - and that is what I am covering here.

First up we have "The ( Read more... )