Denzel Washington (Fences) could win his 3rd Oscar while Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) is in the hunt for his first Oscar for Best Actor. For the longest time, it looked like Best Actor was going to be one of the sure-bets of the night. Until it didn't. After Denzel Washington (Fences) shockingly upset frontrunner Casey Affleck…
Sweat tells a timely story that is made all the more effective from its strong perspective and sensational performances. Though Sweat, Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer-Prize winning play that opened this Spring, takes place in the dawn and wake of the Bush presidency (2000 and 2008), its relevance to our current political climate is palpable. The play is set mostly…
Judd Foxman has had a tough life recently. His baby was strangled by its umbilical cord in the womb, his wife is having an affair with his boss, and his father has just died. This is pretty heavy for the first few chapters of a comedic book, but this sets up for the premise of…
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock tells the story of Leonard Peacock (imagine that) as he is about to embark on a life-changing mission. He has decided that today, his 18th birthday, to kill his former best friend Asher Beal and then kill himself. It’s a very interesting concept. To hear about teen on teen violence from the…
I could not help but be drawn to the novel Me Before You after a barrage of positive reviews from family and friends, and I was even more drawn to the novel when a movie adaptation was announced. The author of Me Before You, Jojo Moyes, conjures an idiosyncratic story that revolves around a protagonist, Louisa…
The author of I Am Not A Serial Killer, Dan Wells, constructs a novel that I describe as a blend of the show Dexter, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and basically any show on the Syfy Network. In Wells’ premiere novel I Am Not A Serial Killer—the first novel in his John Cleaver series—we are presented with…
Don Winslow's The Kings of Cool is a bold, enthralling story of love, lust, greed, drugs, and the fallacies of them all. Don Winslow crafts a masterpiece of a story that weaves together the past and present lives of 8 characters in his novel The Kings of Cool, which is the prequel to his novel…
Red Rising is a familiar, but entertaining trip into the young adult dystopian genre Pierce Brown's novel Red Rising is the first novel of his Red Rising Trilogy, which is comprised of Golden Son and Morning Star, chronologically. We are presented with the protagonist Darrow, a lowly red tasked with fellow reds to mine the depths of Mars…
By the time we were ready to cross the border, we knew everything...and we knew nothing. That's the best way to describe reading Jeff VanderMeer's psychological thriller and first book of the Southern Reach Trilogy. Everything and nothing is as it seems as a 4-person expedition makes their way into the mysterious Area X, an abandoned stretch…
If you're expecting a traditional electronic album with deep thrashing bass and lyrics talking about "poppin' molly" from Jamie xx's debut solo album, then you're in for a surprise, and a damned good one at that. Producer Jamie Smith, best known as part of The xx (a band that I believe is extremely underappreciated), has been…
