Since its cinematic release on May 23, 1980, Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece The Shining has terrified and perplexed audiences in equal measure. While the Stephen King novel it is based on is a classic example of what George Orwell called a “good bad book” — in other words, a superbly executed potboiler that has no […]
Paula Bomer’s novel The Stalker is a poorly written book. The narrative voice is dull. It observes narrowly, always telling when showing would suffice. Its descriptions are crude, such as when it renders a woman’s sagging breasts as “extra butt cheeks.” The dialogue is flat, exchanged between characters who are more of a collection of […]
Caffery Bone, the literary editor of a London periodical, receives an invitation to stay at the mansion of the publication’s proprietor. It doesn’t bode well. Bone is painfully aware that Lord Ower has a track record of hosting those he wants to fire. He casts his mind back to three previous employees who had their […]
Gather round the campfire, children, and I’ll tell you a spooky, scary story about witches and the hunting of them. It was a time of turmoil and terror. A deadly plague cast its shadow over the world, killing by the millions. Children turned on their parents, and neighbors turned on neighbors. In the streets, in […]
The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act in early June. The report found that, compared to current law, the legislation would decrease tax revenues by $3.6 trillion, decrease spending by $1.2 trillion, and thus increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. The report also […]
The accession of Leo XIV, the first American pope and the third successive non-Italian to lead the Catholic Church, brings to mind the illustrious career of Pope Germanian I, another outsider to the Holy See who reigned over a tumultuous era. Germanian began his career as the disputatious monk Martin Luther before ascending to the […]
Greta Thunberg is grifting at sea. The moonfaced Swedish malcontent and 11 other Hamas supporters left the Sicilian port of Catania on the Madleen on the morning of June 1, destination Gaza. If, that is, the Israelis let them land. Thunberg is an old salt. On May 1, technical difficulties ended the environmentalist elf’s first […]
House Speaker Mike Johnson is attempting to reconcile with Elon Musk after the billionaire's fierce opposition to the Big, Beautiful Bill caused turmoil among Republican lawmakers.
The federal appeals court in Washington maintained a blockade on President Trump's attempt to fire the CEO of the Inter-American Foundation, ruling Thursday that the president likely acted beyond his powers.
“It’s not the plan,” former President Dwight D. Eisenhower is supposed to have said, “it’s the planning.” I guess that means that the details of a certain plan matter a lot less than simply having one in the first place. Ike must have known what he was talking about, of course — who am I […]