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Review of The Highly Sensitive Person – Get Ready to be Preached at
(This is a personal review of The Highly Sensitive Person in Love, by Elaine Aron PhD) A Mixed Bag The information in this book is no doubt correct. But along with the science we also get the author’s personal opinions and worldview. There is also a bit of pseudoscience mixed in with this science. So, […]
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Review of Lifelong Writing Habit (Book on Writing)
Welcome to the new year! Hopefully this review is in time for anyone whose resolution involves writing. I will keep this review short, just like the book itself. It didn’t take me long to realize that in Chris Fox’s Lifelong Writing Habit I had found something that I could grab a hold of and use. […]
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I Enjoyed “Sell or Be Sold” Far More than I was Expecting (Nonfiction Review)
This is Grant Cardone’s big book on selling. You might know Cardone as the 10x guy, or for his real estate business. Some people love him, some people hate him. But I’m not reviewing Cardone, I’m reviewing the information in his book, and how it’s delivered. Frankly, Cardone seems like a decent guy with his […]
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How to Write From the Middle
Of all the books on writing I’ve encountered, Write Your Novel from the Middle, by James Scott Bell is one of the best. Let’s discuss it, and check out some of the writing ideas it gave me. There are some books that should be short but are stretched out to fill some sort of page […]
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Cosmos and Psyche: Ultimately, Neither Explanatory, Convincing, nor wholly Fascinating
The mission of Cosmos and Psyche is grand. A lot of people drop this book after the first section because they find out that it’s about the ancient discipline of astrology, even though it’s written by a respectable university professor. I am not one of those people. I think even those who are skeptical, or […]
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State of Fear: Preposterous Thriller, or Engaging Scientific Inquiry?
I like what this book tried to do, which is confront the hard truths of a topic, and provide a second opinion backed up by (lots of) data. This is not a literary masterpiece, and there are lulls and weaknesses in character details, but overall it’s a bit of fun, and something to meditate on […]
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Musings on Crime and Punishment, an Unexpected Novel
I found some rather huge issues with the writing of Crime and Punishment, but once a reader wades through that (and through the very weak and tedious middle section), it’s a decent read. It’s clearly trying to do something great; its sights are set high. At the same time, the novel seems hesitant to clarify […]
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Indian Horse – A Novel Encounter with Indigenous Literature
In Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese covers important aspects of life as an indigenous person around the 60s. Especially, residential schools in Canada, both their destructive assimilation and abuse. This novel, though short, covers a lot of key topics over the protagonist Saul’s life. We move from situation to situation, but in the end each step […]
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Dr. Tarnas’s Intellectual Bag of Stars
2006, Richard Tarnas, PhD and professor of philosophy and psychology, releases a work that would have necessarily changed his career… This is to be a short article on my personal response to what I’ve read so far of Tarnas’s magnitudinous book, Cosmos and Psyche. And for those of you who are already familiar with it, […]
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Timeline, a Novel by Michael Crichton: A Great Narrative Study of the Dark Ages
Review: Timeline, by Michael Crichton. The story is strong, but acts more like a survey of the past. The events are good enough. The characters are actually great; very realistic, and subtle. I am not just an avid reader, I also have seven years of academic Literary Criticism experience under my belt, so believe me […]
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Tree of Life: An Analytic Review
The Light is Fantastic! “Fortunate is the man who has found wisdom and a man who gives forth discernment[…], It is a tree of life for those who grasp it, and those who draw near it are fortunate” (Mishlei/Proverbs 3:13, 18). The writing Tree of Life is an adventure in style as much as it […]
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Alice and Finch – Update 2
Happy too am I! Where are you, my love? Hello. I am Alexandre Dirge. And I dub Alice and Finch’s life to be an Archetypal Comedy, and therefore eternal. Now I digress from my memories of their love story to bring you evidence with the help of Northrop Frye. Elements of Archetypal Comedy These are […]
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An Argument for Symphonia and its theme.
This was a reply to a reddit post that essentially stated that Symphonia was a bad game. The poster argued his point by comparing it to other tales games, instead of judging it on its own terms. I enjoyed the critique, but found it deeply flawed. This argument contains some spoilers for the first third […]
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Life and Memory: An Overview of Programmatic Introductions and Mnemosyne
– The Most Artistic Detective Anime (That isn’t Really a Detective Fiction) From a programmatic perspective, the opening scene of this anime is perfect. Both scenes. The only thing I could think to change would be the placement of the opening (put it after the opening scene, not before it! It’s more dramatic that way.) Before I […]
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Hajimete No Gal: A Raucous Manga
The art was nice, and the main female protagonist, Yukana had something about her… something so rare in female anime character expression. Yukana had confidence.
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Saotome Senshu, the Boxing Manga
After I caught up with Hajimete no Gal, I struck out in search of another romance manga, and I’m happy I did. I found Saotome Senshu. Story Like many romances, Saotomi Senshu has chosen to lower the complexity of the story in order to focus on the romance. Let me tell you a secret. In […]
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Hours
You can tell from the first two seconds of Hours that it isn’t going to be like any other rock album. Some songs don’t even have guitars in them, but still manage to sound like rock, for example my favourite track Aeva and the Waving World which inspired a short story of mine.