I agree - I really loved it and it reminded me of Stand By Me too.

I liked the pace at which they revealed details/glimpses of the monster. I especially liked the gas station scene. I might have preferred just to never get a perfect glimpse of it but oh well. Not all movies are The Host.

Hmm, I've never looked at an annotated Ada. Maybe try reading a newer edition without the annotations? I know this would be much more annoying than Lolita because there is way, way more untranslated French and Russian, but I managed it. I maybe should re-read now that I speak Russian and a little bit of French, but…

Some random others
The Adrian Mole series (infinitely rereadable)
My Heartbeat (a short YA novel I love but that is pretty obscure)
Summer Sisters (another one I reread pretty much every year)

I always confuse this with "Under The Glacier" (which, unlike Volcano, I have read).

I think A Widow For One Year is the best intro to Irving. It's less "wacky" than either Garp or Owen Meany.

I have always been a really fast reader so that might have something to do with it. I feel like it's the same question as why would you watch a movie you've already seen, or listen to an album you've already heard? To experience it again, have the same emotional buttons pushed and, ideally, as Rita Hayworth said,…

It's the one "Slavic canon" book that just really didn't do it for me. I don't know why. I feel like it is particularly love/meh. I've met so many people who say it's their favorite book but also a bunch of people who just don't get it.

I loved The Westing Game. There are a couple other similarly weird, fun, sad, and really good books also by Ellen Raskin. My favorite was "The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues." She also did "The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel," and "Figgs and Phantoms." Those titles are from memory but I think they're…

Oh, and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is probably my most re-read book. I read it for the first time when I was like six or seven (no, I don't have any kind of syndrome) and have re-read it pretty much every year since then. I'm a huge re-reader though so pretty much every book I love, with the exception of super…

I really like the annotated Lolita and I can definitely see why you would prefer reading it. I read it first un-annotated and then the annotated version to write a paper on it in high school.

I kind of disagree with both these perspectives on what criticism/a movie review "should be." The thing is, we know that the critic is writing from his or her own perspective, but reviews by nature are at least *intended* to be more objective than a personal opinion. So there is a balance between a reviewer's…

I really liked No Strings Attached. I thought it had a lot of original elements and I agree that the leads were charming.

The Charles/Erik backstory was rich enough for me. I don't see the Kelsey Grammar Beast as necessarily different from this - he and Xavier clearly had known each other a long way back which First Class establishes. I like the "slightly slippery" continuity but even acknowledging that, I don't see how you can say that…

I get in arguments with people like daily about how I support the idea of equality between sexes (and all people in general!) but I don't want to be called a feminist. I'm part of the problem!

I think that he was really opposed to the idea of killing thousands of people when it was an equally viable option to just drop the missiles without killing anybody at all, and to get away safely themselves. He also had the advantage that Magneto didn't necessarily have, of having experienced and being able to…

What's inconsistent about the Beast storyline? Nothing jumped out at me. I don't know, you have a point about X and Magneto not necessarily spending so much time together but I don't know if the first trilogy ever implies that they were BFFs, just that they were once friends, have known each other for a long time and…

I forgot another big peeve which is why doesn't Magneto have a German accent. I read on IMDb that Vaughn apparently instructed his actors not to do accents (I searched for more info on this but couldn't find anything) but it is really beyond weird that he *wouldn't* have a German accent. He had to have lived in…

More SPOILERS:
I don't tend to look for PC violations but this stood out and really bothered me. Also the way they have a react shot of Darwin when Shaw mentions the threat of mutants being "enslaved." I don't get why they have one of the two non-white mutants go over to the enemy, then have the other go over to the…

Where were the sixties?
I really loved the movie. But my biggest issue overall is that the sixties setting was so emphasized and crucial to the plot, and maybe I'm spoiled by Mad Men, but I was really distracted throughout by how little attempt they made to have it look like the sixties. Beyond Jennifer Lawrence and…