Home of Author and Illustrator Dennis G. Pike
Last night my colleague and I undertook our 4th annual trek to the Toronto Antiquarian Book Fair, an event to which I very much look forward. Alas, it takes place only once a year, and life affords only so many opportunities to seek out such rare and marvelous books. But there is another way to satiate one's hunger for many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, and that is, fittingly, by reading books that are about books...
I will begin by saying that this book is most definitely not for the Tolkien neophyte. The Silmarillion is unquestionably required reading before attempting this collection (for collection it is), and a firm understanding of that work at that.
I made the early error of presuming I could read - and thereby review – this book by the same rules and standards of other fiction, but such conventions are meaningless to Cormac McCarthy. What he has created in Blood Meridian is something altogether distinct, and as such requires a different lens through which to examine it.
I began reading this novel knowing that, (even because) it was published under J.K. Rowling’s ‘nom de plume’, and so I was curious to see how it would differ to her Harry Potter books, and of course, by extension, how it would resemble them as well.
By far the strength of ‘The Bone Clocks’ comes from its characters. From rebellious Holly Sykes, through the charismatic (yet dastardly) Hugo Lamb, to self-absorbed author Crispin Hershey, Mitchell imbues each with a unique voice, and an ample number of pages in which to convey it.
Things are quiet here at The Lost Way, and not only because the world outside has been immobilized by a crippling ice storm. The silence has arisen from my deliberately withholding the new content I've been working on, in anticipation of 'opening day', if you will.
The story arc of Zone One is a glimpse into the life of one Mark Spitz, zombie-apocalypse survivor cum military seek-and-destroy grunt, enlisted in the effort to reclaim Manhattan from the hordes of undead...
Once again Philip Pullman has drawn me into the welcoming yet menacing world of Brytain, Lyra’s parallel universe. Welcoming for all of its post-Victorian quaintness - warm fires and cozy pubs, pastoral landscapes populated equally by salt-of-the-earth commoners, tweedy scholars and graceful aristocrats - yet menacing for the insidious elements of religious zealotry that threaten to destroy this outwardly idyllic world.
The Lost Way 