The Pillowman, the acclaimed play by British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (famous for The Lieutenant of Inishmore and the films In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin), has finally made it to London’s West End, 20 years after its debut. Why…
A book is a stack of sheets of paper bound together with glue or stitching. If it contains lines of writing, we call it a book. If it is blank, it is either a notebook or the world-renowned bestseller Joe…
A friendly warning: After I die, no matter how many centuries have passed, I will return to earth in the form of a bloody whirlwind to rain lava down on any imbecile who dares to remove sentences from any of…
It’s hard not to binge read a Dean Koontz novel. Koontz’s prose is beyond tight. His suspenseful plots hurl readers headlong into raucous adventures in which the stakes for his protagonists are extreme and, for humanity, often dire. His heroes…
A Harper’s article on the publishing industry, in need of an editor even more than this newsletter is, lays out, after much circumlocution, what stopped the proposed merger of two industry giants. The article points out that the Big Five…
The rewriting of Roald Dahl’s so-called kids’ books to avoid alienating progressives who refuse to bring children into the world makes as much sense as the alterations themselves. The Witches amplifies the witchiness of the titular characters by noting their…
Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 By Mark Moyar (Encounter Books, 732 pages, $50) Scholars and writers who challenge conventional accounts of history are often courageous and invaluable seekers of truth. They don’t always find the whole truth, but their…
Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography By Matthew Dennison (Pegasus Books, 272 pages, $24) The iconic children’s book writer Roald Dahl (1916–1990) concluded his last book, The Minpins (1991) with these poignant words: “And above all, watch with…
