Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a tour de force achievement in postmodern narrative deconstruction. While marketed as a horror novel, its true appeal comes from its multilayered story, which, Russian doll-style, compacts no fewer than five layers of narrative. [1] At the center is the story of Will Navidson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning ( Read more... )

Do not read Foucault's Pendulum.

Let me amend that. Do not read Foucault's Pendulum for the sake of reading Foucault's Pendulum. It is at least 200 pages too long, and do you really have that kind of time? The last couple months, I have been inexplicably been having issues with my own mortality-okay, it's actually not too inexplicable when you ( Read more... )

Ever since my friend Angelo hooked me on comics, I have been told, repeatedly, to read The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman.

And now I finally have.

There are a few seminal masterpieces of comic literature that came out of the '80s, including The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Both of them lived up to the hype; both were great stories well told, using ( Read more... )

I know you all have been eagerly awaiting the second half of our Cathy Belben interview, so...there it is. Check out my mad interviewing skillz! She talks about dream casting, questions about the episode, and her fellow writers, among other things. Oh, and we find out what she's wearing. And what I'm wearing. Also, it has the best ending to an ( Read more... )