web analytics

books

“Going Clear”: A Master-piece?

Thanks to the library, I have my hot little hands on a copy of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright. Previously, I'd read Wright's fantastic article in the New Yorker about David Miscavige, the successor to Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard. And now there's so much more to wallow in! I'm only about 100 pages in so far, but already it's an astonishing portrait of a bizarre, delusional, overbearing, narcissistic larger-than-life personality. With this background, I'm now realizing how eerily accurate Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in The Master really was. (It doesn't make me [...]

2016-12-31T17:59:01-07:00April 11th, 2013|Tags: , , |

Distant Hours, The

A Gothic Phase Author: Kate Morton I’ve been going through a bit of a gothic phase lately. No, not like back in high school, when I spent all my time sulking in my room, picking at my black nail polish and listening to the Cure. (These days I spend my time sulking in my room, picking at my grey nail polish and listening to history podcasts.) I’m talking about the silly yet addictive fiction genre in which a sensitive, bookish young single woman finds herself on some windswept island or wuthering moor somewhere in the UK, ideally near a crumbling [...]

2016-12-31T17:56:42-07:00November 17th, 2012|Tags: , , , |

Poison Pie

Halloween may be over, but I'm still elbow-deep in some very spooky reading: The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum. I learned about this book from one of my favorite podcasts, "Stuff You Missed in History Class," since they've referred to it in a couple of episodes on famous poisoners lately. The book is about the birth of modern forensic medicine, which more or less took place in Jazz Age New York. The medical examiner's office had been a pretty corrupt and lazy department, accepting bribes to change death certificates and generally not being too ethical. Until, that is, the crime-fighting [...]

2016-12-31T17:59:06-07:00November 4th, 2012|Tags: , , , |
Go to Top