The Amber Spyglass does tend to go on and on and on. A reader might feel she is one of the souls pictured on the book’s cover.

I read “La Belle Sauvage” when it came out two years ago, and found it a gripping adventure.

It’s a story thing, but the West of England does have a history of serious flooding, in fact it’s happening right now. Several years ago many people drowned in the Somerset area, and some scholars speculate that one source of the Arthurian “Isle of Avalon” was prehistoric deluges that created islands throughout the…

Oh Hon, you need to take a break.

I have no prior experience with Watchmen, in any of its forms, but I did appreciate seeing a tough older woman as the center of the episode. I don’t know whether she is a good guy or a bad guy, and I didn’t care.

Thankfully, I suppose, I read all the books and then saw the movie, and I can’t remember anything about the movie’s ending.

Mine makes a loud beep when the power goes out and then comes back on. It kept doing that during a recent windstorm and kept me up half the night.

There is indeed a shrieking aspect to it that might creep out the listener instead of enrapturing them.

On a mildly serious note, I was more impressed by Minority Report’s vision of the 2040's. Some grime, some gleam, but mostly it looked pretty much like today’s world. I’ve noticed that Apple? Microsoft? someone has been pushing a vision of wall-sized touch-screen computers that are very similar to the technology in…

My youth was in the Fifties and Sixties, so in my suburb most kids went home for lunch, put on their costumes, came back to school for a party, afterwards went trick or treating in the neighborhood (since nearly every house had someone at home in the late afternoon), then home for dinner. At night there was a…

“Light from light, true God from true God...”—the Nicene Creed.

Body odors are a funny thing... Back when I practiced martial arts in the  Seventies guys who hadn’t washed their uniforms smelled like chicken soup to me.

Take my advice, kids: don’t watch it while you’re tripping.

Yeah, until his character rapes Diana Rigg.

This is a wonderful novel, one which I instantly thought should be dramatized. If there is such a thing as being realistically post-apocalyptic, this is it. I am not into that genre but it was recommended to me by a bookstore clerk.

Some people, whom I hate, are the same weight they were in college. There is always tailoring, of course, which Zhang can clearly afford.

On my last trip to the Louvre I discovered that my credit card was missing, and after my life passed before my eyes it turned out that I had left it at the restaurant the night before and by the grace of God they still had it. Then I had to catch a train, so I only had an hour to see whatever I could see, so I saw…

If I see one more couple barging into the bedroom, frantically tearing their clothes off...

When she didn’t like a movie she didn’t just dismiss it but went on for pages about why it was bad.

I saw this movie when it came out, and couldn’t sleep for a week. Then I read the book, and couldn’t sleep for a week.