A Tiger in the Kitchen made me hungry. Really hungry. I love Asian food of all sorts, and listening to author Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan describe these family favorites in such loving detail made me want to try to make them myself, because I just knew takeout was going to be a disappointment. Dumplings, soups and special desserts, often tied to holiday celebrations and memories of family dinners, are all on the menu in her book, subtitled “A Memoir of Food and Family.” Her attempts to reconnect with her family and childhood through not just recipes but the act of preparing them, will be achingly familiar to many readers. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Last Snow, Eric Van Lustbader’s new political thriller, picks up right where First Daughter left off.  Edward Carson is now the President.  First daughter, Alli, is recovering from her kidnapping ordeal, and Jack McClure is still talking to his dead daughter. The President is in Russia, negotiating an arms deal, when an important administration ally turns up dead. President Carson is counting on Jack to untangle a web of lies and keep Alli safe — which would be easier if he had some idea who was after them. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Corrag by Susan Fletcher is historical fiction that does something I love: it takes an historical event and looks at it from a new angle, through the eyes of a new character. The story is based on the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe, where supporters of King William were responsible for the deaths of 78 members of the MacDonald clan, killed because of their delay in pledging allegiance to the new king. Corrag is an English witch who had lived among them, imprisoned in the aftermath of the massacre, and sentenced to be burned alive at the stake. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Drawings from the Gulag begins unexpectedly, with a headshot of a proud homo-sovieticus from one of the USSR’s eastern minorities. Wearing thick soviet spectacles and a soviet suit, and with impeccable posture, this man gazes at you, the reader, with firm resolve. Here is a stalwart Comrade-of-the-Month, whose portrait would be placed at the entrance to a massive factory complex in some industrial soviet city. Forget bonuses and a salary raise — true glory was to be found in constructing the socialist future.

The man is Danzig Baldaev, and to his colleagues he really did appear to be a loyal soviet citizen. Born in 1925, he worked for decades in the soviet prison service- no place for the squeamish, that’s for certain. And yet flip to the first illustration in the book, a drawing of a crowd of proud revolutionaries titled ‘Inception of the Gulag’ and in the top right hand corner there is an inscription that reads: ‘Dedicated to the 70^th anniversary of the giant of Russian literature, A.I. Solzhenitsyn.  11^th November 1988’. A strange thing for a career penal officer to write, no? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Daniel Kalder
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The Sweet Relief of Missing Children begins with the story of Leonora.  She is pretty and tidy and protected. She has her vaccinations, she knows not to talk to strangers, she eats her vegetables and she never takes the shortcut through the alley.  She is precious to her parents and she understands these precautions because she understands that she cannot be both precious and free.  In the end, none of it matters. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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The early 20^th century was a golden age of American horror and fantasy fiction. Inspired by the works of such great gothic writers as Bram Stoker, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Matthew Lewis, and Edgar Allan Poe, a new breed of writer was crafting tales of fancy, suspense, and supernatural horror. In publications like Weird Tales and FantastiFiction, heroic, larger-than-life heroes strode across harsh landscapes to do battle with incredible creatures, witches fought for the souls of the innocent, and a house itself might come to life and attack its tormented inhabitants.

The literature of fantasy, heroism, and horror is one of pure entertainment. The crafters of these stories were interested primarily in offering to readers a diversion from the trials of their everyday lives. In many cases, their literary skills were unequal to their visionary imaginations, and the entertainments they created were considered disposable. It is only a select few of the pulp authors of this era whose names are remembered today, and continue to charm a new generation of fans with a taste for exotic storytelling.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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Winter’s Bone is not a new book — it was originally published in 2006. If not for this year’s Academy Awards, I might never have heard of it, and that would have been a loss. Daniel Woodrell’s story of courage and desperation in the Ozark mountains is beautiful and haunting and deeply moving.  Mostly, I was moved to fury — I wanted to round up every one of Ree Dolly’s male relatives and take after them with a shovel!

[Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Paula Holiday left the stress and grind of New York City for a “smaller and simpler life” in Springfield, CT. She runs a landscaping business, Dirty Business, helping realtors dress up the houses they’re selling and local businesses put in pretty patios. Her friend and client, Caroline Sturgis, has approached Paula about opening a business. The offer appears to good to be true and you know what they say about offers like that. When Caroline is arrested and “Monica Weithorn” is the name on everyone’s lips, Paula agrees to help get to the bottom of this identity mystery in Dead Head by Rosemary Harris. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Entertainment Weekly has a photo of the costume to be featured in the new Wonder Woman television pilot, written by David E. Kelley.

For a tightly-controlled character with a lot of licensing on the line, it actually doesn’t look that bad — although, it doesn’t top this fan designed outfit:

Tags: books & writing, television by Ricky Sprague
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It’s not often that I get to indulge in pure fantasy junk food. Paranormal romance is not my usual choice, but a friend was interested in Dark Prince, so I decided to give it a try before I passed it along. I had a stressful business trip on the schedule and I thought that some chiseled, supernaturally handsome vampires would be great company in my lonely hotel room – and I was right. Dark Prince is literary junk food – no nutritional value but oh, so tasty. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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A friend who read last week’s review of Homer and Langley suggested this week’s book, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost as a follow-up. Stuff cover the story of the Collyer brothers in great detail.  In fact, that’s one of the things about the book that appealed to me — they focus on case studies, real people with fascinating stories. Some have more insight into their problems than others, but from each I learned very interesting things about hoarding and the people who struggle with it. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow is a fictionalized telling of the story of the Collyer brothers — two eccentric New York brothers from a wealthy family, living in a spacious brownstone on 5th Avenue.  They became famous, not for their wealth or their looks or their philanthropy, but for their compulsive hoarding.  It’s a tragic story and Doctorow’s fictionalized account is compelling reading, trying to give some background and insight into the lives of these famous recluses. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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In the ever-turbulent economic climate, hearing about the demise of yet another big box store is not that surprising, or even that unsettling. In fact, seeing storefronts shuttered until the next box chain moves in and breathes recycled air in that space until its life cycle ends, is now more common — and more expected — than seeing a chain or department store last the duration of one’s lifetime.

Keeping that in mind, along with the knowledge from following their ups and downs in the news, I was not surprised to read that Borders had finally filed for Chapter 11. But it didn’t make it any less sad to see. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, money by Sara W. Moreno
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In The Mistress of Abha by William Newton, Ivor Willoughby goes searching for the father he barely knew.  A British soldier stationed in Arabia, Ivor met his father, Robert, on only 2 occasions and for only a handful of days in total, but Robert was a legend in their household and beyond.  Ivor is determined, from a very young age, to go to Arabia for himself and see the land that so enthralled his father.  His father’s legend, the story of Ullobi, is not at all what he imagined.  It’s much, much more. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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10. Although this sonnet’s only ten lines long,

9. And not a sonnet’s needed full fourteen,

8. To call this poem a sonnet would be wrong.

7. So this poem’s dedicated to Maureen.

6. I Love your kindness, wittiness, and grace.

5. I Love the fire burning in your soul.

4. I Love your gorgeous body, lovely face.

3. When we’re together, I at last feel whole.

2. We’ll share Eternal Love, us One together.

1. Or, at the very least, forever endeavor.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, his & hers, living poetry by Bob Sullivan
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I do love my detectives and their tough-guy sidekicks:  Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Spenser and Hawk, and now Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.  Elvis Cole is an ex-Ranger with a Mickey Mouse phone, a bright yellow Corvette and a troubled past  Joe Pike is his silent partner — dark shades, distinctive tattoos and very few words.  The bonus for fans like me is that Robert Crais has taken the sidekick in his popular detective series and given him a series of his own — double the reading, double the pleasure for me.  His latest Joe Pike novel, The Sentry, draws Pike into the problems of a lovely woman and her shady uncle…whether they want him there or not. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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You might have heard about the Huffington Post being sold to AOL for around $315 million. The internet was “virtually queefing” about it yesterday. Unfortunately, now that the vaginal farts have stopped and the dust has settled, we’re getting slavery metaphors.

Huffington Post runs its organization like an “antebellum plantation.” Now, I can’t take credit for that particular bit of wordsmithery — that comes from the mighty keyboard of a man named Tim Rutten who works for a real news organization, The Los Angeles Times. In an editorial with the cutesy-poo title AOL ♥ HuffPo. The loser? Journalism, Mr. Rutten isn’t afraid to risk looking completely stupid as he lays it all on the line:

The other partner to this dubious arrangement is the Huffington Post, which is a new-media marvel of ingenuity, combining a mastery of editing geared to game the search engines that stimulate Web traffic and overhead that would shame an antebellum plantation. The bulk of the site’s content is provided by commentators, who work for nothing other than the opportunity to champion causes or ideas to which they’re devoted. Most of the rest of the content is “aggregated” — which is to say stolen — from the newspapers and television networks that pay journalists to gather and edit the news.

[Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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There is a blog called Law and the Multiverse, in which two lawyers write entertaining and earnest posts that are occasionally mind-bending in their level of detail about how existing laws would be applied to superheroes. The blog started in November 2010, and they’ve already been written up by BoingBoing, Volokh Conspiracy, and the New York Times.

It’s a fun way to look at the law, I guess, and an interesting (if not completely original) take on superheroes, whose absurdity is often too easy to take for granted. However, there is one major, Mjolnir-sized hole in the logic underlying the blog.

All of the laws that Law and the Multiverse examines would not exist in a world inhabited by superheroes. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, on the law by Ricky Sprague
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When Elizabeth Lerner was fifteen, something horrible happened to her: she was kidnapped by a serial killer.  She was held hostage for nearly 6 weeks.  She was beaten and raped.  But she wasn’t killed.  He killed girls before he kidnapped her, he killed girls after he kidnapped her.  He did not kill Elizabeth.  She has never known why.

Walter Bowman is scheduled for execution in just a few weeks.  He has one final chance — and one secret ally — to bring out his version of the truth, and perhaps convince the governor to spare his life.  But it all depends on Elizabeth Lerner. I’d Know You Anywhere tells the story of those final weeks, Walter’s last-ditch efforts, and Elizabeth’s search for closure. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Marvel published the top comic book of 2010. Do you know what it was? Do you even care? It was The Avengers #1.

“The Avengers” No. 1, Marvel Comics’ relaunch of its superhero property featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man and Wolverine, was the best-selling comic-book title for 2010.

A relaunch, of a comic book that was first published in 1963, then relaunched in 1996, then relaunched in 1997, then relaunched in 1998, then relaunched in 2004 (actually a resumption of the original series launched in 1963), then relaunched in 2010. You can try to follow it all here, if you like.

In 1998, the great cartoonist Frank Miller told The Comics Journal,

When I was in my 20s, putting together Ronin and feeling the handcuffs come off creatively, I thought that we just had to win a certain number of business victories and there would be an absolute explosion of all this fine talent producing work that they were dying to do. And there’s no politic way to put it– it’s been a crashing disappointment to see what’s actually happened. And as time has gone by, my expectations have lowered. Talent is being squandered by people just becoming the next person to do whatever old Marvel comic. That’s not just squandering an opportunity, it’s suicide. Creative suicide. In one of my nastier moments, I started comparing the industry to a bunch of Elvis impersonators, trying to sell records. Understand, I grew up on the old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko stuff and loved it and will always have affection for it. But repeating it would be like staying in first grade the rest of my life. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, movies by Ricky Sprague
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