Month: June 2017

This essay contains spoilers for Gone Girl. Gone Girl came into the world on May 24th, 2012, and the five years since its publication have seen a seismic shift in literature as authors and publishers scrambled to create “the next Gone Girl.” The influence of Gillian Flynn’s novel can be seen not just in the … [Read More]

The Beach By Alex Garland While reading The Beach, the emotion I felt most frequently was anger. Not because the book was bad—quite the opposite. I felt angry because this book is really good, and it seems to have been collectively forgotten by the literary world despite critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release … [Read More]

Norse Mythology By Neil Gaiman Looking back, Norse Mythology seems like an inevitable project for Neil Gaiman; his enormous body of work is chock-full of references, explicit and implicit, to Odin, Thor, Loki and various other characters and locations that stem from the Norse myths he elects to (re)tell here in their unaltered and unmitigated … [Read More]

I can’t remember life before The Hobbit. I first read it when I was probably five or six years old, and I have since revisited it more times than any other book; it remains perpetually entertaining and relevant, full of magic and whimsy that doesn’t seem to age even as I do. Tolkien’s place as … [Read More]

A Monster Calls By Patrick Ness Original concept by Siobhan Dowd Let’s get this out of the way: A Monster Calls is a story about cancer. It’s not a secret and it’s not subtle, which typically equates to a deluge of trite sentimentality intended to cheaply manipulate you, the reader, into crying like a baby. … [Read More]