Category: Review

Run Aneesh Chaganty (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/SusannTennyson.jpg’ attachment=313′ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] [av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”] The mental disorder generally known as “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” seems to be having a moment in popular culture. The term describes a condition in which caregivers deliberately report nonexistent symptoms or, more alarming, cause… Continue reading Run

Ever wish you had a different book for every day of the year? Me neither, but I created this list anyway. I went down a rabbit hole looking at the Modern Library’s list of the “100 Best Novels of the 20thCentury” and comparing it to Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels Since 1923,” and decided they were… Continue reading A Book a Day: The 365 Greatest Books of All Time

 Life and Death are Wearing Me Out Mo Yan (2006) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Shakespeare-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’76’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] Most American readers don’t really know much about contemporary Chinese novelist Mo Yan, or if they’ve heard of him at all it’s because they remember he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in… Continue reading Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Bloomsbury’s Late Rose Pen Pearson (2019) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Shakespeare-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’76’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] If you’ve never heard of the Edwardian British poet Charlotte Mew, you’re not alone. Mew is these days as little known as she was during most of her life. In Bloomsbury’s Late Rose—her fictionalized story of Mew’s… Continue reading Bloomsbury’s Late Rose

Rebecca Ben Wheatley (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Susanns.jpg’ attachment=’78’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=10” appearance=’on-hover’] 2 JACQUELINE SUSANNS [/av_image] If you’re an Alfred Hitchcock fan, you know that the master of suspense, one of the most respected auteurs in the history of film, never won a Best Director Oscar, despite being nominated five times.… Continue reading Rebecca

War Lord Bernard Cornwell (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Shakespeare-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’76’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] Ask anyone about the greatest battles in English history and the Battle of Brunanburh is not likely to trip lightly off their tongue. And yet without this battle there would have been no “England” at all. The battle,… Continue reading War Lord

The Trial of the Chicago Seven Aaron Sorkin (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/3-12.jpg’ attachment=313′ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] Three Tennysons/Half Shakespeare[/av_image] [av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”] Just in case 2020 hasn’t given you enough images of civil disobedience, police brutality, and governmental abuses of power, Aaron Sorkin’s new film takes us back to… Continue reading The Trial of the Chicago Seven

The Wolf of Snow Hollow Jim Cummings (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Tennyson-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’77’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] Director Jim Cummings made a splash in 2018 with his first full-length feature film, Thunder Road, an independent film that won the “best feature” prize at Austin’s prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival as well… Continue reading The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather (1927) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Tennyson-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’77’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] If you’re a fan of Willa Cather, you most likely were introduced to her through her early novels that invoke pioneer life on the great plains of Nebraska where she grew up: O Pioneers (1913), The… Continue reading Death Comes for the Archbishop

Enola Holmes Harry Bradbeer (2020) [av_image src=’http://jayruud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Tennyson-180×180.jpg’ attachment=’77’ attachment_size=’square’ align=’left’ animation=’left-to-right’ link=” target=” styling=” caption=’yes’ font_size=” appearance=’on-hover’] A couple of years ago, Millie Bobby Brown, best known for her acclaimed portrayal of the character Eleven on the popular Netflix series Stranger Things, joined her older sister Paige in reading a six-book YA series of novels… Continue reading Enola Holmes