The Colorado Kid is a novella by Stephen King published in 2005. Although it has been out for several years, it just now came to my attention when the Syfy Network launched Haven, a weekly TV program loosely – really, really loosely – based on the novella. The first couple of episodes were good enough to get up my curiosity about the book. The Colorado Kid is a quick read at just 184 pages in small book format, including an explanatory/apologetic/defiant afterward by King. More than most books, The Colorado Kid depends on characterization and story-telling more...

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Jane Austen is one of the most beloved (and widely read) authors of English literature of many generations. Having written her novels in a different century, how is it that she has manages to captivate readers, decade after decade? The fact of the matter is that Jane Austen's writing is timeless. My first encounter with Jane Austen was through Pride and Prejudice. Though the movie version of the novel is considered a "chick flick," and some might venture to call it "chick lit," the novel deals heavily with important social matters such as manners, morality, education, and...

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The full title of the book is The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President. As cumbersome and ungainly as that title is, it accurately conveys both the content and the style of the book. Maybe it was the Clinton fatigue, but I had no interest in reading this book when it first came out in 2005.  Nor did I want to read or hear any more dirt about any of the candidates during the last election cycle.  So only last month did I finally pick up a...

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Like any other good playwright, Tennessee Williams has quite an interesting story to tell. What makes Williams different from other playwrights is that the story he tells is his own. In his earliest years as a playwright, Williams was largely unsuccessful. His first major play, Battle of Angels, which he had received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant to create, failed to achieve success. Modern critics have agreed that Williams had tried too hard to make his earliest plays have an earth-shattering effect on its audience; he tended to overemphasize aspects in his plays. However, Williams eventually learned that all he had to...

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