Book Review – The World War I Reader

The World War I Reader by Michael S. Neiberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good set of primary and secondary accounts of the title subject. But be aware of the text’s limitations. As most perspectives are subjective and limited in scope, this isn’t the best choice for one’s first ever reading about the war. And several entries work better as artifacts than as education, particularly those where the writing is so terrible that it verges on unreadable. However, if you already have a firm grasp of the bigger picture, these snapshots from many particular angles prove fascinating more often than not.

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Book Review – Everything Is Tuberculosis

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author of The Fault in Our Stars turns a nonfiction spotlight on the triumphs and tragedies in the battle against tuberculosis. I admit that before I read this I probably would have guessed that malaria or cancer was the world’s single deadliest health problem, but that’s mostly because I live in a country where this curable illness is easily treated in most cases and deaths are exceptionally rare. After establishing the history and biology of the bacteria, John Green spends the rest of his book explaining the roadblocks (mostly economic) that prevent people in many places in the world from getting the assistance they need. He puts a human face on the problem by focusing on one young victim from Sierra Leone, a case study that shows the perils of poor quality treatment and the promise of improved systems. The book is short but makes its points effectively enough.

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Book Review – Jesusland

Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture by Joelle Kidd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the outside looking in, mass media produced specifically for evangelical Christian consumers looks a lot like a slightly distorted mirror image of its mainstream counterparts: somewhat crappier production values, the total absence of profanity and nudity, the bizarre delusion that Kirk Cameron is talented and smart, and of course the omnipresent evangelical agenda. But as Joelle Kidd ably demonstrates, the view from inside looking out is much darker. Focusing on her church school childhood in the early 2000’s, she explains how music, movies and other media produced by Christian nationalists are designed to unite “true believers,” often at the expense of everyone else. Thinking back on my own often-awkward younger years, I can only imagine how much worse things would have been if, in addition to masking my thoughts and feelings from those around me to avoid bullying, I also had to hide myself from myself in order to avoid spending eternity in Hell. Tempting as it is to regard right wing media as dumb but essentially harmless, Jesusland serves as a well-written reminder of the dire consequences of regarding this stuff as acceptable.

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Book Review – Not Built in a Day

Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire by Emma Southon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This must have been an extremely difficult book to write. Emma Southon’s affection for ancient Rome is evident in all her books. But here she undertakes 350 pages of unflinching discussion of the essential underpinning of Roman society: an unspeakably brutal system of slavery. And I do mean “unspeakable.” Despite her tireless scholarship, extensive vocabulary and brilliant wit, the author frequently finds herself at a loss when trying to express her feelings about just how cruel the Romans were to enslaved people. Nonetheless, she does her job as a historian. The result is an excellent account of the various forms of slavery in the republican and imperial eras, described in detail with a constant care for viewing things from the perspective of the enslaved.

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Book Review – The Disappearing Spoon

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sam Kean does another good job of making a scientific discipline accessible, this time bringing wit and history to bear on the chemistry and physics of the periodic table. Despite his best efforts, some of the doings of subatomic particles remained elusive. But I was fascinated by the personalities and processes that organized the table and put the elements in their places.

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Book Review – The Plutonium Files

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an impressively thorough study of the US government’s experiments in which human subjects were dosed with radiation without their informed consent and often without regard for the danger to their health. Journalist Eileen Welsome follows multiple paths taken by the Manhattan Project, Department of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies to figure out what happens when radioactive materials find their way into the human body. The author adds an important extra dimension to the study by including the personal backgrounds of many of the victims, transforming a disturbing history from statistics to tragedies. This is a must read for anyone interested in the functions of science in the absence of morality.

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Review – Do Not Enter (2026)

Because if you spend some money making this kind of movie, this is still what you end up with. A social media production crew breaks into an abandoned hotel, and the additions of a rival gang and a Descent-esque plot twist don’t contribute anything interesting to the story. Some of the production design is surprisingly good, but otherwise this could have been made by a guy with a camcorder. See if desperate

Book Review – How Comics Are Made

How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page by Glenn Fleishman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Glenn Fleishman possesses an impressive amount of knowledge about the historical relationship between printing and cartoon creation, a subject I find fascinating. And yet I found myself disappointed by this book. It’s poorly written, with far too much time and space devoted to points that have already been made or points he hasn’t gotten to yet. But more surprisingly, the layout is also awful. The main flow of the text is chopped to bits by side bars, pull quotes that look like sidebars, illustrations that don’t appear on the same page with their descriptions, and interruptions that hit in the middle of paragraphs and sometimes go on for pages before the narrative resumes. The book is also plagued by technical glitches including shifting font sizes and words that run together. The author has plenty of interesting facts and important insights to share, so it’s a real shame that the bad design work gets so thoroughly in the way.

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Book Review – The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar: A History Strange and True by Dorsey Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m in an awkward spot with the media here. “Audible Audio” was the only format option for this title on Goodreads. However, I actually watched the Great Courses video series and read the companion book. Regardless of delivery method, Dorsey Armstrong’s excellent expertise and witty delivery are the main appeals. She runs the gamut on the Templars, from historical context to rise and fall to cultural impact (including some fun and some not-so-fun conspiracy theory stuff). If you’ve any interest in the subject, this series is worth your attention.

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Review – The Great Wall

Because the title would be too long if the movie was called The Great Amount of Money We Can Make If the Cast Appeals to Markets in Both the United States and China. Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal and (briefly) Willem Dafoe supplement an otherwise mostly Asian cast in what would otherwise have been a standard, big budget Chinese fantasy action movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Zombie School

This comes so close to being so bad that it becomes charming. Amazon’s AI dubbing didn’t help matters, though I suspect the dialogue wasn’t exactly Oscar bait even in Korean. For the most part I was able to sit back and let the sheer plotless stupidity wash over me. Unfortunately a handful of scenes involve violence against animals, including some B roll of pigs in which they appear to actually be harmed. Cut that crap out and the rating would have gone up. See if desperate

Review – Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes

This is one of those dramas where you hope against hope that it isn’t going to go the way you know it will. And then of course it does. The inclusion of Max von Sydow as a German Jesuit priest went a bit overboard just to find a way to get a white actor into the cast. On the other hand, I appreciated the inclusion of stories that didn’t have happy endings; anything else would have been blatantly dishonest. The filmmakers do a good job of recreating the disaster as best they were able with the budget they had. Mildly amusing

Review – Hiroshima (2003)

This two-part BBC production follows the final stages of the Manhattan Project up to the dropping of the bomb on the title city. Back in 2003 they were still able to find several people on the American and Japanese sides willing to talk about their experiences, and the dramatic reenactments were a good complement to the interviews. Worth seeing

Review – The Equalizer (2014)

The folks who made this know the revenge movie formula and are good at sticking to it. Denzel Washington is a proven success playing the everyday Joe who falls back on his government assassin past when a friend is threatened. It’s emotionally satisfying to see him keep the upper hand pretty much the whole time, and it doesn’t exactly hurt that the villains are sex-trafficking Russian mobsters. Mildly amusing

Review – Valley of the Dolls

Cliché characters (especially the women) . Hackneyed plot. Dreadful dialogue. Wretched musical numbers. How has this never been turned into a Drag Race Rusical? Though this is nobody’s finest hour, it’s a particularly unfortunate moment for Patty Duke, who tried to use this wretched stinker to move from comedy typecasting to weightier roles. And Sharon Tate’s turn as an actress done in by decadence adds an unintentional creepy spin to the production. Whether this is just plain bad or so bad it’s funny may depend on how seriously you take Hollywood’s 60s-era drug problems. Or maybe just what mood you’re in. See if desperate

Review – Superman (2025)

What an aggravating movie. For better or worse, a big part of Superman’s charm is that he consistently wins fights against the bad guys. But here our hero starts out on the losing end and rarely gains the upper hand until the very end. If the character needed to be reimagined this way, at least they should have used a different villain. In real life we’re all taking a constant beating from vile tech billionaires, so it would have been a lot more fun to watch Lex Bezos Musk Luthor take way more frequent lumps. And the animal peril is genuinely excessive, insufficiently offset by the meticulously happy ending. The cast of newcomers and semi-familiar faces do their best with what they’ve got, but overall this is hard to watch. See if desperate

Book Review – The Fiends in the Furrows

The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror by David T. Neal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though I could’ve done worse for a quick summer read, overall this anthology wasn’t great. It got off to a good start with the first story or two, but then the problems set in. I abandoned two of the stories, one for excessive world building and the other for excessive (and frequently kinda random) adjectives. Animal abuse was also a frequent theme, which automatically isn’t a relaxing reading experience for me. One of the stories I liked had proofreading problems that made the flow choppy. And so on.

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Book Review – 101 UX Principles

101 UX Principles: A definitive design guide by Will Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At last someone wrote a book about UX principles that’s actually about UX principles. This is aimed at designers, coders and other folks working directly in the title realm, not at mid-level managers trying to wedge user experience into a project management scheme. All of Will Grant’s advice is excellent. Even the points I didn’t entirely agree with were well made and worth at least considering. And though my focus tends to be more on the graphic design part of the process (roughly 20% of the book), I nonetheless gave enthusiastic amens to the technical points I don’t work with directly. Grant’s principles tend to focus on how to improve user interfaces rather than how to create them, so this might not be the best starting point for absolute beginners. But anyone who has mastered the basics and wants to get better at what they do will find plenty of useful tips here.

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Book Review – White Coat, Black Hat

White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine by Carl Elliott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I may be in a bad position to review this book. I picked it up as part of a research project on medical ethics that’s more focused on the Nazi krankenmord programs. And no matter how bad corporate dishonesty and greed get, they still don’t reach quite that far down. That said, Carl Elliott makes some excellent points about some of the pharmaceutical industry’s practices that definitely need to stop. However, he also points out some places where dancing with the big pharma devil has produced laudable results, such as cooperative efforts with AIDS activists back in the 1980s. Thus the narrative often washes the coat and hat in the same load of laundry, with a resulting tendency for things to come out looking grey.

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Book Review – Fulvia

Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome by Jane Draycott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jane Draycott does an excellent job of giving a second chance to one of ancient Rome’s most reviled women. Of course for a woman to be remembered by Rome’s rabidly sexist historians was almost certainly to be reviled, most likely either for being avaricious or promiscuous or both. It was also Fulvia’s particular bad luck to be married to husbands who were themselves wildly unpopular with contemporaries in a position to heap scorn upon them (particularly Cicero). But what emerges here is a more even-handed portrait of a woman possessed of great wealth and married thrice to great power. In this light, Fulvia’s efforts to protect and advance the interests of her family are more understandable, even if not universally sympathetic. The text is both readable and enjoyable, making this worthy of consideration for anyone interested in writing women back into history.

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Book Review – The Lives of the Caesars

The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After reading a couple of Tom Holland’s books about Roman history, I was curious to see how he’d do translating Suetonius. Though I’m not qualified to judge the accuracy of the translation, readability is high. Holland uses plain English without resorting to excessive vernacular, which was particularly helpful in the more sexually explicit passages sometimes omitted from older translations. And of course in keeping with the original author’s prose style, the contents are a bizarrely organized parade of the best and worst in the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors.

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Review – Insidious: The Red Door

Despite being a big Lin Shaye fan, I was relieved to see this series give up on the Scooby Doo prequels and return to the family from the first one. Unsurprisingly, hypnotically repressing memories of the whole journey-to-the-ghost-dimension thing just leaves father and son even more vulnerable when the same crap crops back up again. Maybe I was just in the mood for a dumb ghost story, but I really enjoyed this more than most of the other movies in the set. Mildly amusing

Book Review – What If? 2

What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you liked the first one, I’m confident you’ll like this one too. Randall Munroe’s continuing considerations of absurd physics problems begins with the effects of the entire inner solar system filling with soup, and it goes from there. Brief chapters are a fun way to spend some time between other commitments and even learn some scientific principles along the way.

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Book Review – Neurotribes

NeuroTribes: The Untold History of Austim and the Potential of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a journalist, Steve Silberman takes a badly-needed neutral approach to a topic that’s frequently the subject of considerable axe grinding. As the author recounts, defining and determining the nature of autism has been a long process with many false steps, and some folks can be downright hostile about sticking to whatever stage they happened to get stuck on. Though the text identifies dead ends as what they are, it’s still reasonably respectful even to theories that turned out to be wrong. Indeed, in some places it’s a little too respectful. I would love to see a new edition of this book that reflects some of the changes in conventional wisdom, particularly about Hans Asperger’s level of collaboration with the Nazis’ eugenics agenda. Also as upper middle class parents were historically best able to advocate for their children, there isn’t a lot of focus on any other populations until toward the end of the book. Drawbacks aside, this is an excellent job of explaining the history of medical diagnoses and popular perceptions of people on what’s now known as the autism spectrum.

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Review – The Stoning of Soraya M.

Fundamentalist misogyny turns lethal in post-revolution rural Iran. Unjustly accused of adultery by a husband too cheap to pay alimony, the title character suffers the title punishment in a brutally graphic sequence. But in many ways the execution itself isn’t as upsetting as the events leading up to it, particularly after the victim realizes she has neither recourse to justice nor hope of escape. Mozhan Navabi and Shohreh Aghdashloo turn in particularly touching performances as Soraya Manutchehri and her aunt respectively. Worth seeing

Review – Meteor

I don’t know what’s more ludicrous: the science, the special effects, or Sean Connery playing an astrophysicist. And the fact that Connery has any competition for “worst part of the movie” should tell you just how bad the rest of it is. A giant title object speeding toward a cataclysmic rendezvous with Earth should have been the ultimate 70s-era disaster plot, complete with a cast of actors who should have had better agents. But both the problem and the solution (blowing it up with nuclear missiles) are so ridiculous that the whole thing’s impossible to take seriously (and kinda not funny enough to accept as laughably bad, though it does have its moments). What would Jordy Verrill say at a time like this? See if desperate

Book Review – Never Flinch

Never Flinch by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m sorry Holly Gibney didn’t come along earlier in Stephen King’s career. She’s a likeable, multi-dimensional character, so if nothing else she could have been a welcome relief from all those books about writers with writer’s block. Sadly, her series didn’t get underway until the author was painfully past his prime. This one reaches novel length only by awkwardly intertwining two different antagonists. And as neither villain has any kind of supernatural abilities, the tale rarely rises above mediocre crime thriller. Further, King seems to be leaning into the cliche about the trouble he has with endings, as the finale here is so abrupt that it makes the preceding 400 pages seem kinda pointless. This is a reasonably entertaining summer read, but it’s a high point neither in the author’s overall career nor the Hodges and Gibney sets in particular.

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Review – Avalanche

This movie is a master class in how not to tell a story. The premise is paper thin, but even a solid set-up would have swiftly fallen victim to the ridiculous plot twists and thoroughly motiveless characters. The presence of big name stars – including Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow – should at least have been a triumph for the casting director. But instead the sight of competent actors struggling with epically terrible dialogue just calls more attention to how bad the script is. If you’re in the mood for something laughably awful, this should do nicely. Otherwise see if desperate

Review – Antony and Cleopatra

This isn’t anyone’s finest moment, including Shakespeare himself. Though the Bard of Avon takes the blame for the story dragging on for a whole hour after Actium, most of the rest of the dreadful creative decisions rest squarely on the hammy shoulders of lead actor / director / writer Charlton Heston. Somehow the man’s monster ego convinced him that the source material would be greatly improved with a bunch of weird editing and other tricks that waver between experimental and stupid. See if desperate

Review – Predator: Killer of Killers

The quality of both the animation and the storytelling strongly resemble extended cut scenes from a Predator-themed video game. Or maybe even more than one game. The first two subplots combine easily enough. Who wouldn’t want to see a badass viking and a badass ninja team up to battle Predators? But the protagonist of the third story is a World War Two era pilot. Within the episode, the Predator spaceship WW2 dogfight theme works well enough. But when this guy shows up in the arena of death with two hand-to-hand combat experts, it takes some awkward plot twists to effectively work him into the drama. When it comes to low-budget tack ons to famous franchises, I’ve seen worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Predator: Badlands

A wimpy Predator and the upper half of an android – both of whom talk too much – team up to locate and subdue a monster on a death planet. I found it innovative that all of the human-appearing characters are played by only two actors, which must have cut way down on the casting budget. Which is a good thing, as clearly they needed as much money as possible for the effects-intensive action sequences. The result is slick and clever without being particularly interesting. Mildly amusing

Book Review – The First into the Dark

The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled by Michael Robertson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As the title indicates, this is a consideration of the krankenmorde, the Nazis’ formal and informal systems for murdering sick people. The authors divide their work into two parts. The first half is a fascinating yet hard to read history of Aktion T4 and other efforts to murder anyone too physically or mentally disabled to serve a purpose in the reich. This turns out to be one of those experiences where just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it gets worse. The second half focuses mostly on debates about definitions and ethics. It’s important stuff, but it isn’t as compelling as the history.

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Review – Fear Below

The parts with the shark in it were fun. The rest of it was a vaguely unsatisfying 1930s era caper movie about divers trying to recover stolen gold from a van at the bottom of a muddy river. The acting and production values were good enough. Even the script was okay. It’s just that most of the story didn’t do much beyond bridging the gaps between moments when the shark swam in out of the murk and bit someone. Mildly amusing

Book Review – Practical UX Design

Practical UX Design by Scott Faranello
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this while on a quest for a textbook for a freshman-level User Experience Design class, and wow was this ever not what I was looking for. The author serves abstruse design theory buried under a blizzard of baffling buzzwords. The result appears to be aimed at MBAs and MFAs without really meeting the needs of either (let alone the beginning-level students that are supposedly part of the target audience). The illustrations were a further obstacle to understanding, mostly screen caps from popular (in 2016) web sites that either did or didn’t clearly illuminate the point at hand. A sprinkling of errors – both typographical and factual – didn’t add to the credibility of the text. If you’re headed to a cocktail party where you’ll need to sound smart (without actually being smart) about UX, these lessons will do nicely. For other approaches to the subject, seek elsewhere.

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Book Review – The Vest Pocket Kodak and the First World War

Vest Pocket Kodak & The First World War, The: Camera & Conflict by Jon Cooksey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book was like lingering in an excellently-curated museum exhibit about the title subject. The text was concise and the illustrations copious. Though several sections left we wanting to know more about their topics, overall the coverage was comprehensive. In a war famous for inventing new ways of killing, there’s a wonderfully human quality to the simultaneous introduction of new ways of seeing and recording (not to mention camera marketing).

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Book Review – More Making Books by Hand

More Making Books by Hand: Exploring Miniature Books, Alternative Structures, and Found Objects by Peter Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book at the wrong point in my book-making career. I’m in my getting-my-feet-wet phase, just trying to figure out what goes into assembling an art book. So I found myself a bit overwhelmed by all the extremely specific instructions for creating various kinds of unusual books. Indeed, without the copious illustrations, I would have been completely lost. Thus I may find myself back here at some point in the future when I’m ready to break out the tools, stock up on supplies and actually start making. The examples from the authors’ work are also helpful, though I found their well-to-do white people’s aesthetic a bit inaccessible. Overall this does a solid job of providing what the title promises.

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Book Review – Asperger’s Children

Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book about a difficult topic. Though Hans Asperger’s studies of neurodivergent children began to lay the groundwork for what we now know as the Autism Spectrum, his active cooperation with the child murdering regime in Vienna in the late 1930s and early 1940s taints every contribution he made. Edith Sheffer carefully analyzes not only Asperger’s complicity in the deaths of “undesirable” children but also the influence Nazi psychiatry had on the theories he developed. The author is also careful to distinguish fact from evidence-based supposition and pure guesswork. Organization is good, readability is high, but this is still a difficult read due to the unflinching coverage of events.

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Book Review – The Violinist’s Thumb

The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Though I enjoyed this as much as I liked the other Sam Kean books I’ve read, I admit I found the subject a bit more inaccessible than usual. That’s likely due in no small part to the complex, technical nature of DNA. I’m sure it’s hard to simplify without losing the essential points, and personification – analogizing by attributing emotion and intent to molecules – doesn’t help. But interesting intersections between science and history abound, which keep the author well within the realm where he excels.

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Book Review – 1,000 Artists’ Books

1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring the Book as Art by Sandra Salamony
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating collection of well-photographed pieces of art in the form of books (or book-like objects). It’s amazing to see how a medium that’s been around for centuries – even millennia – can be reinterpreted in so many different ways. I didn’t get much out of the intro, but the works themselves more than made up for that. For any artist considering working in this milieu, this gallery is a must-visit.

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Review – The Running Man (2025)

I’m not a big fan of movies that set up elaborate game rules and then either ignore or break them. If the plot isn’t going to follow its own established structure, then why bother making up rules to begin with? Even basic character motivation gets tossed to the wind for the sake of keeping the bullets flying and the explosions exploding. I thought the comic book silliness of the Schwarzenegger version was part of its charm, and that’s almost completely lacking here. And after one of Stephen King’s other Bachman books recently turned out to be better than expected, that just made the letdown here a little bit worse. So come for the action, but don’t feel like you have to stay for the story. Mildly amusing

Book Review – Mastering UI/UX Design

Mastering UI/UX Design: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications by Frahaan Hussain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are some nuggets of good information here, but you’ve gotta really dig for them. Once the authors establish basic UX principles, the text becomes extremely repetitive. Even in the realm of technical writing when some repetition is encouraged, this is excessive and badly in need of a good edit. Snippets of CSS code are a poor substitute for visual examples, the lack of which is a problem in an intensely visual realm. Normally I keep reviews focused on content rather than presentation. However, given the subject matter, I feel the need to point out that the ebook formatting on Hoopla was so terrible that the text was nearly unusable. I picked this up hoping that I might be able to use it as a textbook for the UX Design course I teach. But no, the search continues.

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Book Review – Creative Journaling

Creative Journaling: A Guide to Over 100 Techniques and Ideas for Amazing Dot Grid, Junk, Mixed-Media, and Travel Pages by Renee Day
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though I read the whole thing, I found the last 100 pages or so much more useful than the first. The beginning of the book mostly focuses on simple layouts and labeling, and a lot of it would work better in a planner or tracker than in a journal. But then the author completely switches gears and focuses on more purely artistic things that can be done with journal pages. I suppose the combination means that the book meets all needs, but my interests definitely fell way more squarely in the back half, much of which was really good.

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Review – Nuremberg

Despite the high quality of the acting and other production values, I’m not sure this accomplishes much that wasn’t already done by Judgment at Nuremberg 65 years ago. Indeed, I was a little surprised to see the first set of Nazi defendants – particularly big fish Herman Goering (Russell Crowe) – humanized to this extent. I believe I understand the filmmakers’ intent to use the “banality of evil” approach as a warning that people can be monsters even without horns and fangs (a particularly poignant lesson in the current climate). But then the good guys also seem cynical, incompetent, dishonest or otherwise morally ambiguous. Thus the movie was fun to watch but a little unsettling to reflect upon. Mildly amusing

Review – The Conjuring: Last Rites

Though I’ve seen the word “last” used deceptively in horror series titles in the past, this did have the “tired of making these things” feeling that suggests an actual final chapter. If that proves true, then the Conjuring set ends with a whimper, neither as innovative as the first, as petulant as the second or as off-the-rails crazy as the third. I should also note that early in the movie, Ed Warren is giving the standard tour of his basement museum of evil curios, warning against touching because “everything in here is either possessed, haunted or has been used in a ritual.” At which point someone in my viewing group MST3K’d it with “Half this stuff has been in Anton LaVey’s ass.” After that it was impossible to grant the production the sense of gravitas it demanded. Mildly amusing

Review – Grey Matter

One of the items on the Nazis’ long list of vile crimes was the murder of disabled and neurodiverse children. Hundreds of these kids were killed in Austria’s Spiegelgrund “clinic” under the supervision of Heinrich Gross, who added to his crimes by preserving the children’s brains and other body parts in jars. If your workplace gets a betting pool going about the year when the government finally acknowledged what happened and agreed to give the remains proper burial, be sure to put your money on 2002. That’s also the year that filmmaker Joe Berlinger made this movie about the situation and sought an interview with ancient-but-not-yet-dead Gross. Spoiler alert: I was relieved that they couldn’t track him down, as he would doubtless have simply claimed to be unable to remember what he’d done (a lie he’d told in court in the past). His victims deserved to be memorialized without granting their killer any screen time at all, so I’m sorry they even tried to find him. Beyond that this is a powerful documentary about an important subject. Worth seeing

Review – The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

This is a silly fantasy about British commandos in World War Two, but it’s a reasonably well crafted silly fantasy. The plot doesn’t make much sense, and the acting isn’t anyone’s finest hour. But the explosions are loud and the violent deaths of Nazis are frequent. What more can we ask from a 21st century action movie? Mildly amusing

Review – Tarot (2024)

The title of the movie pretty much guarantees in advance that the story isn’t going to be rich in original thinking. Indeed, there’s no need to even summarize the plot. Imagine what you’d think it would be, and that’s what it was. But production values are reasonably good, and some of the shocks are at least kinda shocking. Mildly amusing

Review – Kings of the Sun

What a weird movie. George “that guy from West Side Story” Chakiris plays a Mayan king who leads his people away from foreign invaders and then in turn invades the land of another group somewhere on the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico. For an extra dose of what-the-hell, Yul Brynner plays the leader of the indigenous people who must now fend off the invasion. It looked like they spent a lot of money making this without giving a lot of thought to whether anyone would actually want to see it, so it’s kind of a shame that this is at best a footnote in some otherwise legendary careers. Mildly amusing

Book Review – The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The fascinating mysteries of the functions of the human brain are made all the more interesting because many of them have been (at least partially) solved thanks to some truly bizarre incidents. Accidents, bullet wounds, surgical misadventure and other trauma that has damaged only parts of victims’ brains has helped researchers figure out what parts of the brain are connected to which aspects of human behavior (and also how our functioning depends on multiple areas working in tandem). Sam Kean does an entertaining as well as enlightening job of telling some of the key tales in the history of neurology. This is definitely worth reading not only for those who want to learn more about the subject but also for anyone who likes engaging stories from the history of medicine.

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Review – Primitive War

The end credits are better than the rest of the movie, mostly because the video at the end sticks to a mix of the Vietnam War and dinosaurs without bothering with a nonsensical plot, wretched dialogue or dislikable characters. The effects team put some thought into their work, maybe too much so. For example, some of the CGI reflects the current theory that dinosaurs were feathered creatures that looked more like birds than reptiles. On the one hand, that’s an intriguing idea that’s worth putting in a movie. On the other hand, in more than one spot it looks far too much like the humans are being chased by giant chickens. A solid A for the concept, a B for the technical filmmaking, but no better than a D for everything else. See if desperate

Review – The Shrouds

Not for the first time, I began watching a David Cronenberg movie thinking “that’s an intriguing premise. I wonder if he’ll do something interesting with it.” And an hour or two later concluding “evidently not.” A billionaire sets up a graveyard with sophisticated imaging technology that allows mourners to watch their loved ones rot in real time. Is it a snide commentary on a moribund, media-obsessed society? No, it’s a blend of vaguely racist conspiracy nonsense and icky, fetishistic sex that suggests a career regression to the days of Naked Lunch and Crash. And while normally I would have walked away feeling cheated by the exceptionally weak ending, here I was just glad the damn thing was over. See if desperate

Review – The Carpenter’s Son

Predictably enough, this is what you get if you mix a horror movie, a Christian message piece and Nicolas Cage. During his unrecorded teenage years, Jesus has some awkward moments as he kinda figures out who he really is. The premise is interesting enough, but the writing is weak and the pace is lethargic. This also relies too heavily on tropes such as “snakes are demons” and “anyone who’s pretty but behaves strangely is automatically evil.” Mildly amusing

Review – Creature of the Mist

What an odd little movie. The story launches into huge-tentacle-monster-attacks-feudal-Chinese-city action almost immediately. But then just as fast it gets bogged down in arguments between characters from different social classes forced to shelter together in an inn. The action sequences were okay. The rest didn’t do as much for me. At least it was short. Mildly amusing

Book Review – The Acrylics and Gouache Artist’s Handbook

The Acrylics and Gouache Artist's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Acrylics and Gouache Painting for the Home Artist by Barron's
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good general introduction to the subject. Entries on gouache are scarce, so if that’s your main interest then you should probably seek elsewhere. On the acrylics side, coverage is fairly thorough. Some of the descriptions and examples left me wondering why one wouldn’t simply switch to oils or watercolors, but at least they demonstrated the versatility of acrylics (especially with extra media added). I admit to skimming the section on color and composition, looking for medium-specific information rather than (in my case largely unnecessary) lectures on basic theory. And I felt that some of the text reflected the author’s biases a bit too strongly. However, as someone who hasn’t done much with this kind of paint, I found the work overall helpful and easy to follow.

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Review – Forbidden Empire

I’m in awe of this movie’s stubborn refusal to make any kind of sense. There are some good visuals here and there, and if you like the vaguely brain damaged humor of Russian horror fantasies you will find yourself well served. Beyond that, Russia’s number one box office hit of 2014 left me wondering how bad the rest of the country’s cinematic output must have been that year. Mildly amusing

Review – House of Darkness

Justin Long seems to have a particular talent for taking uncomfortably awkward social situations and making them infinitely worse, a gift that gets free rein in this relentless tale of a date gone horrifically wrong. Except for a pause in the middle and a brief moment of actual action at the end, the whole production is like reading texts from a douchebro trying to get laid. So In the Company of Men with vampires, a combination nobody asked for. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Blood and Snow

This is what John Carpenter’s The Thing would have been if everyone involved had been terrible at their jobs. Though there’s plenty of blame to go around, the leading culprit is the script. Other than brief monster moments here and there, the vast majority of the running time is given over to pointless bickering, much of which is difficult to follow let alone care about. The only thing I found even vaguely intriguing about this experience was speculation about what sort of abandoned building it was filmed in. Shopping mall? Hospital? It’s a mystery on par with how anyone managed to scrape together a budget for something this awful. Wish I’d skipped it

Book Review – Breaking Cat News

Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News that Matters to Cats by Georgia Dunn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review covers not only this book but also the rest of the series up through It’s Showtime, Sophie. Georgia Dunn brings clever illustrations and an excellent sense of humor to the tales of three cats (and their many friends) running a broadcast news operation that covers their daily apartment-dwelling lives. The storytelling is at its best when narratives run for a single page or maybe three or four pages. The longer arcs that crop up in later volumes often involve cats in peril, and those are hard to enjoy even when they have happy endings. But when the focus is on cats being cats with a twist of journalism, the series is highly entertaining.

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Book Review – Painting from Photographs

Painting From Photographs by Patrick Seslar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m an awkward fit for this book. Many of the watercolor techniques used by the author and his wife are well beyond me, though I hope to get there someday. On the other hand, I found a lot of the photography advice too basic (not to mention badly outdated). As the artists tend to use photos in combination and often modify them considerably, initial photo quality wasn’t all that big an issue. Indeed, in some places I found myself wondering why they bothered with photos at all rather than just painting from memory or imagination. However, the practical examples did a good job of moving from “photo sketching” through interim steps to end result.

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Book Review – The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back by Donald F. Glut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in the early 1980s, KC’s Fine Arts Theater was in the same strip mall with Rainy Day Books. Finding myself with nothing to do between pictures in a James Bond double feature, I strayed down to the bookstore and bought a copy of this book. Which I subsequently forgot and left behind at the end of the second movie. So finding a copy more than 40 years later is probably a personal record for length of time taken to finish reading a book. The text itself is standard fare for a quick novel based on a pre-production copy of the script, but it turns into a fun “spot the difference” between book and movie (for starters, in this version Yoda is blue). The illustrations are Ralph McQuarrie’s concept sketches, so they’re good without being purpose-made for the print edition. Fans of the movie may get a kick out of this, but fans of literature most likely won’t.

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Book Review – Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators: Learn How to Paint Landscapes, People, Still Lifes, and More. by D.K. Publishing
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well written and copiously illustrated, this text covers a range of watercolor-painting-related topics from beginning elements to advanced techniques. This might work better as a reference kept at hand while one pursues the art. Thus I somewhat regret reading it cover to cover without stopping to actually do any of the lessons. But it was a library borrow and had to be returned.

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Book Review – Making Nonfiction Comics

Making Nonfiction Comics: A Guide for Graphic Narrative by Shay Sarah Mirk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good book about the title topic. But be warned: the first half treats “nonfiction” and “journalism” as synonyms. So if your interests lie elsewhere, start reading with the chapter on memoirs. Even if you do want to explore 20th century news styles, you’ll probably need something more in depth than this, especially if you’re new to interviewing. However, when it gets good it really is good. The advice tends to be helpful, and there’s enough variety in the approaches to make it likely that you’ll find something that fits what you want to do and how you want to do it. A lot of the interviewees (and both the authors) are veterans of The Nib, so if you were a fan then this will feel like a reunion.

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Book Review – Ugh! As if!

Ugh! As If!: Clueless by Veronica Litt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Veronica Litt writes a charming little critique of a charming little movie from 1995. The picture was one of Hollywood’s “progressive for its time” productions, which makes it hard to analyze 30 years later. Does one emphasize the positive (directed by a woman at a time when that rarely happened, Black and gay characters treated as human beings) or criticize the narrative’s shortcomings (trivializing teenage girls’ hatred of their bodies, “colorblind” treatment of race as if it doesn’t exist)? The author does a loving job of striking a balance between the two. Now I need to go back and re-watch the movie.

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Book Review – Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up based on Darcy Armstrong’s recommendation in her Great Courses series on the Black Death, and I’m glad I read it. I particularly loved the view of the 1665 plague from the perspective of a woman living in a fictional version of Eyam, the English village that shut itself off from the rest of the world in an effort to keep the infection from spreading. Geraldine Brooks is an excellent writer, and she uses her talent to explore several aspects of human behavior in extreme conditions. The last chapter and epilogue go a bit too far afield in search of a happy ending, but the bulk of the book was outstanding.

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