Probably because it’s the heart-palpitating summer read you’ve (or at least I’ve) been waiting for. I wrote an article earlier this year about how Netflix was adapting Blake Crouch’s yet-to-be-released novel Recursion; my only familiarity with Blake Crouch at that time was his Wayward Pines Trilogy and his novel, Dark Matter—the cake-hole blowing, mind-bender about a man desperately navigating the multiverse in order to return home to his family. If that article was to have matured, wrinkled and become the middle-aged version of its relatively naïve self, it would be this article. A not-so-book-review book review aimed to inform …
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to tell stories of great depth and complex characters, the literate. No, that’s not from the sonnet on the Statue of Liberty, nor is it the slogan for the International Dublin Literary Award—but perhaps it should be. The referenced lines are a quasi-quote from “The New Colossus” which I altered to reflect not only my envy but admiration for one Emily Ruskovich. Idaho native and creative writing teacher, Emily Ruskovich just won the world’s richest prize for a single novel—€100,000 ($113,000) to be exact. Her novel, Idaho, was one …
Birthdays never stop being special; even when we grow tired of them, the people in our lives do not. Someone almost always shows up with a gift—socks, shirts, Doritos (thanks mom). It’s the thought that counts right? Pleasant reminders that we are not in the world alone. But, let’s be honest, sometimes the best gifts are the ones we personally pick out ahead of time. This was most definitely the case for young Anne Frank. On June 11th, 1942, a day before her thirteenth birthday, Frank chose a gift. While browsing through a bookstore with her father, Anne Frank …
Stand by for a warm and fuzzy feeling. It has often been said, by those who enjoy a good book, that we live inside of our soft and hardcover friends. Such a notion has never held more validity than it does for the lucky residents of an anonymous building in Utrecht, Netherlands. The aesthetically pleasing surprise comes courtesy of illustrious street artist Jan Is De Man and tattoo artist Deef Freed‘s handy-work. The owners of this building, who love a good read, asked their delineating friend, Jan Is De Man to deface—or rather reface their previously boring structure. …
This is the age of division—of crowded twenty-six lane highways existing alongside speeding motorcycles about to hit a T in the road. An age of shiny watches and clothes draping suffering souls; cultures on a collision course. A time of CGI, and action-packed prose—a great medium; but, where does poetry fit in? William Wordsworth once said, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” The type of expression formed through reflection and contemplation—as we prepare to address the things that bother us. I remember reading the preface to a little book …
