Thought Train to Pusan

(With art by John Ridgway and Alfredo Alcala) And so I have officially completed a quarter-cannonball and reached the halfway point of my goal of 26! Albeit, most of the books I have reviewed in the past few months have been Shakespeare plays and/or graphic novels, which typically don’t take all that long to read. In any case, here I am to keep that theme going with yet another graphic novel: Original Sins in the first volume of the “Hellblazer” collection, and is made up of the first nine issues of the comic series, all focusing on the character of John Constantine, as he works his way through the world of demons and dark magic. You may be familiar with the movie, Constantine , with Keanu Reeves as the demon-killing hero? Well, in the original literary source material that is these novels, Constantine is British as British can be. And also dresses just like Castiel the angel in “Supernatural”… And to be honest I really can’t see that as a coincidence, as ...

Insurgent is the second novel in the “Divergent” series by Veronica Roth. And I hear that Divergent is soon to be adapted into a film? Well that might be interesting… In my head I sort of pictured the protagonist, Tris, to be just like Taissa Farmiga in “American Horror Story”, which (in my opinion) would be some swell casting. But then, for some reason I totally disregarded the fact that Four is 18 and imagined him as an only slightly-younger, somewhat beefier, Sherlock-y Benedict Cumberbatch. The character’s inevitable relationship made this a tad inappropriate, depending on how you see things (and no, I don’t consider that a spoiler, as you can see their relationship coming from a mile away). That being said, this series is made for young adults, and as such, there is inclined to be some not-strictly-necessary romantic aspect. If you are within that target demographic, however, you would absolutely love this book. If not, you might get a little annoyed at some parts, t...

A girl that I know told me that she felt like she was reading a really old, historical episode of “Gossip Girl” when she read Measure for Measure , what with all the scheming, slut-shaming, and blackmail of these high-status people. Not to mention, the fact that it tries so hard to be serious, and yet, there is something missing and so cheesy about the ultimate resolution that it pushes the whole thing into a melodramatic mess of “are you kidding me right now?” I never thought I’d hear Shakespeare being related to “Gossip Girl”, but the more I think about it, the more the sentiment seems pretty on-point. I know, I know, I sound like I simply hate Shakespeare, what with my many not-so-great words on him lately, but this is not the case; in fact I absolutely love certain works of the Bard! But these days, he’s becoming more and more hit-and-miss for me. And this? This was a miss. Let me explain: Measure for Measure is often categorized as one of Shakespeare’s “problem pl...