A primer in gothic lit

That is what I needed when I decided to read Matthew Lewis's The Monk.  And I'd say I received a pretty good overview of the genre.  Hey, you can only read Bram Stoker's Dracula just so many times.  Or can you?  Back to the blood-sucking bat cave!

Disclaimer: Yes, I know vampire bats are from South America and yes, I know bats are barely in Stoker's novel.  I recall the titular count being likened to one as he clung to the side of the castle... or was that a lizard?  Yup, now I have to read it again.  But here is my review of The Monk first.

Book Review: The Monk

Source: pintrest.com

Source: epublishabook.com

Ozzy gives bats nightmares.  How droll. / Source: sanitaryum.tumblr.com

Source: Amazon.com

The Monk, by Matthew Lewis

From the book’s cover:

Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt. The only edition of this key gothic novel available, The Monk now offers a new introduction and notes that make it especially accessible to the modern reader.

Talk Like A Pirate Day isn't for another four months...

...but we're talking like pirates today.  The very recent discovery of the infamous Captain Kidd treasure (well maybe it's part of his treasure, but the jury is still sharpening their cutlasses on that one) led me to remember this little review I had tucked away. 

Book Review: Pirate Latitudes

And here is the link to the Captain Kidd treasure story too, if you're curious.  Kidd's supposed habit of hiding his treasure is said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Treasure Island.  I already reviewed that one.  So Pirate Latitudes will have to stand in, in its stead.

Source: mjeffryes.net

Source: Amazon.com

Pirate Latitudes, by Michael Crichton

From the book’s cover:

Jamaica in 1665 is a rough outpost of the English crown, a minor colony holding out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, Jamaica′s capital, a cut-throat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses, is devoid of London′s luxuries; life here can end swiftly with dysentery or a dagger in your back. But for Captain Edward Hunter it is a life that can also lead to riches, if he abides by the island′s code. In the name of His Majesty King Charles II of England, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking. And law in the New World is made by those who take it into their hands.

Word in port is that the Spanish treasure galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is stalled in nearby Matanceros harbor awaiting repairs. Heavily fortified, the impregnable Spanish outpost is guarded by the blood-swiller Cazalla, a favorite commander of King Philip IV himself. With the governor′s backing, Hunter assembles a roughneck crew to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer the galleon, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloody legends of Matanceros suggest, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he finds himself on the island′s shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry are all that stand between him and the treasure.

With the help of his cunning crew, Hunter hijacks El Trinidad and escapes the deadly clutches of Cazalla, leaving plenty of carnage in his wake. But his troubles have just begun. . . .

Local out of a Common Ocean

That'd be the opposite to the title of today's book being reviewed. 

Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land

And on the topic of sci-fi, here's a meme I saw today that seemed worth including.

The Most Interesting Sith Lord in the Galaxy. / Source: MSN.com

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Source: Amazon.com

From the book's cover:

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love. 

The review:

My first exposure to Heinlein's work, I must admit, was the movie version of Starship Troopers.  I was in living a busy but fulfilling life in Arizona when that film came out, and didn't see it, except for a minute or two glimpsed on TV after it released on home video.  In fact, I can't say as I've seen the whole film ever in my life.  Maybe I watched it once on TV, long after the fact.  I can't say.  The things I recall from my initial impression of the film was that I found Heinlein's use of Mormons as fodder for the alien bug species' wrath to be more than a little annoying (in the story, so far as I've come to understand, Mormons go off to some other planet to be weirdos, and are then attacked by the bugs aliens of the plot and nearly wiped out; the portrayal of Mormons is as askew as if an author depicted all catholics as bred, wed, and dead and the rest of the time being drunkards and dogmatics).  Also regarding Starship Troopers, I recall hearing, and perhaps later seeing for myself, that Heinlein had wrote the soldier characters who go off to fight the bugs as being very much hyper-sexualized and into a lot of "free love."

Bowing to pressure

Movie Review: Into The Woods

My most vocal reader has been complaining about the way I do the blog these days.  The jumps from the main page to the content, I mean.  And so, in an effort to give the people what they want (a quote - and not a very nice one, I might add - from one of our founding fathers about "The People," comes to mind), I will put my latest review here, below.  On the main page.  Yes, there is still a little jump to open the rest of the content, but if you can't live with that concession, then... complain some more and I'll cave on that too, I guess.  I feel like such a sell-out.

Into The Woods (2014)



A witch tasks a childless baker and his wife with procuring magical items from classic fairy tales to reverse the curse put on their family tree.  Short synopsis of Into the Woods taken from IMDb.com

I thought "This is a good idea," when Into The Woods began screening on my TV.  But what started as a good idea seemed then to drag itself to death, and bore me in the process.  First of all, I know this is based on some Broadway play or something, and the idea is good, as I said.  But really, there is WAY too much singing going on.  The lyrics are very clever, and the characterizations of the fairy tale folk works nicely, in theory.  But I got tired of the plot very fast.  I thought it was too much of a good thing in places, and so it seemed to overflow its banks and get messy.  The plot needed tightening up.  Or lose a character.  I vote we kick Rapunzel off the island.  She doesn't do anything anyway!

Aliens exist. It's conspiracy theories I'm afraid of.

A rare Op-Ed piece today.  This one has been sitting around a few years too.

Op-Ed: Little Green Men in the West Desert


Careful!  They're ruffled!

An informative look into an often maligned board game

You should really give the movie Ouija a chance to scare you silly.  It tries, darn it.  It really tries. 

Movie Review: Ouija

And (tongue firmly planted in cheek) here is another "super-scary" Ouija story, just in case you saw the film already and, like me, you found it to be more than a little wanting in the fright department.

ouija board scare

You just can't make stuff like that up.

Another board game you shouldn't let your kids play with, lest it give them bad ideas and influence them for evil. / Source: boardgamegeek.com