Let’s get this out of the way: Elementary lacks a certain je-totally-sais-quoi compared to other contemporary Sherlock Holmes TV series. Its mysteries often make little sense ; the bad guy is almost always the only next-tier guest actor who is not a canonical character; and in one of its recent episodes,…
One thing — okay, one of the many things — that troubled me about J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is how it deals with murder. In the third book, we learn along with Harry that there are three Unforgiveable Curses: the Imperius Curse, which forces the caster’s will upon…
What do boy wizard Harry Potter and Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum have in common? Apart from messy black hair? Answer: another kid against whom competition feels personal. Someone competing at the same level but for the other side. Someone whose actions hike up the in-story tension. In short… a rival.
Labour Day is fast approaching, and with it the crisp weather and colourful foliage of fall. If, like me, you work in academia or education, the more intense part of your job is on the horizon (or already here, depending on whether, like me, you left all your planning for the end…
(tl;dr — because I am contrary!) CBS’s Elementary and the BBC’s Sherlock are the most well known current television updates of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Both follow the adventures of the Great Detective and his bff, Watson, transposed into the 21st century, with a healthy helping of original plot and characters. Judging by…
There are some books that make me want to grab the main characters by the scruffs of their necks, sit them down, and order, “OK. You, tell him what you saw. You, tell her the thing you learned from the guy. NOW STOP RUNNING AROUND DOING USELESS THINGS AND HELP EACH OTHER.”…
Everyone knows that romance novels are for women. And so are stories that focus on who’s hopping into whose bed and which couples will end up together. Everyone also knows that those kinds of stories are inferior. Why would anyone who’s not a woman want to watch (ugh!) The Notebook…
Ever since I finally finished reading the books I already have, I’ve been glutting myself on all the books I’ve wanted to read for the last couple years. Which means I’ve been doing a lot of reading this month and plan to do plenty more over the rest of the…
(WARNING: Spoilers for Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the original Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation movies, and various Sherlock Holmes stories and adaptations.) I w a r n e d y o u t h…
Among the many things that bother contemporary readers in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is his treatment of Susan, the eldest sister and second-oldest sibling of the four Pevensie children who defeat the White Witch to become the rules of of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In The…