I don’t go for slasher gore unless it’s campy fun (love the old 80s Phantasm flicks with the murderous silver tennis ball). But a good suspenseful horror flick like The Exorcist, or even better Exorcist III (original book: Legion) is always fun. More than that, I like ghost stories that aren’t reall...

Lex asked if ordinary Polish citizens were still supportive of Ukraine. I think that they indeed are still very supportive. This just in. If exit polls can be trusted, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (right-wing) just suffered a defeat with record numbers of voters turning out for the electio...

Received her 2nd book The Hole the other day and inhaled it all in 1 night. It's another short one, around 100 pages, but it really packs a punch. In fact it may be the book's deceptive simplicity that makes it so powerful. The Hole (original Japanese title Asa , the name of the main character) begi...

I'm not a writer, but this subject really interests me. If you write fiction, especially in 1st person, do you make any effort to remove your personal thoughts & opinions from your language? I guess there are two schools of thought where one method favors a lot of subjective, emotional language ...

Lex asked if ordinary Polish citizens were still supportive of Ukraine. I think that they indeed are still very supportive. There’s a war next door. The place where I was visiting is just 60 kilometers from the Belarusian border, Ukraine is somewhat further southeast. My Polish friends are very pro...

Murmur wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 1:41 pm Wow. I wrote two replies months apart, saying the same thing. Obviously, I should have looked at the second page in this thread before posting. Embarrassing.

lmao You shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t notice and thought they were from 2 different people.

I randomly grabbed the book The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada because it was cheap and had an interesting cover (pink with a steaming trash can). At only 116 pages I figured it would be light fluff for a lazy afternoon. Crikey was I wrong. Although the writing style is straightforward enough, the book i...

I'm also lukewarm on the book. I was expecting something with more elegant Victorian language like other mid-to-late-19th century works: Maupassant, Poe or even Dickens. Bram Stoker's writing is much more basic. Like others have pointed out, the vampire story was presented earlier in Carmilla, or ev...

This past summer I had the opportunity to visit Poland ... I’m still of the opinion that NATO has the obligation to defend and fight with Ukraine against Russia. I’m unwavering in that view ... Back to Poland... I'm of the same opinion, but I worry that the average voter (Europe as well as USA) is ...

Camus The Stranger... The paperback cover with a bunch of people in tall striped hats and white makeup . And on the back is 1 person who's sideways . I mean, yeah, obviously 1 person is "strange" and doesn't fit in, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Seems more like the pub...