Author Archives: holdenm

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Posted on May 13, 2013 by holdenm

Just out of college, Clay Jannon becomes a Web designer for a small business, then quickly loses his job to the sands of economic collapse. Unemployed and without much experience, he accepts a job as the night clerk for a … Continue reading →

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Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Posted on April 12, 2013 by holdenm

Train Dreams is a weird little book. Only 116 pages but sweeping in scope, it tells the story of Robert Grainer, born in the late 1800s, orphaned and sent to live in the Pacific Northwest where he becomes an itinerant … Continue reading →

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Solaris (DVD) – Director Steven Soderbergh (2003)

Posted on March 29, 2013 by holdenm

Psychologist Chris Kelvin, played by George Clooney, arrives on a spaceship near the planet Solaris to investigate why the crew is suffering. Kelvin has a vivid dream of his deceased wife his first night on the ship and then discovers … Continue reading →

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Free Will by Sam Harris

Posted on March 17, 2013 by holdenm

Today we hear a lot about choice. We hear that it is within our power to make choices that benefit us and to take responsibility for choices that haven’t. Good messages, but are they true. Free Will argues that choice … Continue reading →

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What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann (DVD)

Posted on March 8, 2013 by holdenm

You may remember Sally Mann from a book of photographs published in the 1990s. The book includes a number of photographs of Mann’s children hanging out, without clothing, near the family’s cabin beside a lake. The photographs were hailed by … Continue reading →

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The Devil in Silver by Victor D. LaValle

Posted on February 2, 2013 by holdenm

Pepper (we only ever know him as Pepper) gets into a fight with three police officers who admit him to Hyde Park mental hospital in Queens, New York because a trip to the precinct would involve too much paperwork. Pepper … Continue reading →

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Why be Happy When You Could be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

Posted on January 24, 2013 by holdenm

Jeanette Winterson is an acclaimed British author who has written over 20 books, the first of which, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Prize, was then made into a television show, and is currently assigned reading for … Continue reading →

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Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Posted on November 5, 2012 by holdenm

In her previous memoir, A Year of Magical Thinking, author Joan Didion writes about the death of her husband. More recently in Blue Nights she writes about the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo. The recent memoir differs from the … Continue reading →

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The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Posted on October 13, 2012 by holdenm

Meet Tony Webster, a self proclaimed ordinary Englishman who offers readers sensible observations on the nature of life and its trials: “the reward of merit is not life’s business” and “time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent.” … Continue reading →

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Mrs. God by Peter Straub

Posted on September 10, 2012 by holdenm

A good ghost story works beneath the surface of our attention, shifting it now and again to a telling plot insight and then letting it sink back into eerie atmosphere. In the recently republished novella Mrs. God, author Peter Straub … Continue reading →

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