ZapTown

the time got away from me. A combination of work and personal matters. In the interim though, I read a few books, including one almost-classic that I was expecting to like, but not nearly as much as I did. The happy surprises are the best ones, aren’t they? It was in my ‘to-read’ pile for a couple of months, and when I finally got to it, I burned through it in a few days.

It’s difficult to pull yourself away from the hammock in the Summertime and lay down some thoughts, but given all of the beach reading that goes on in the season, it’s a perfect time to record some thoughts about reading that I’ve had recently.

Last month was quite a busy one, and it seems apt to take some time this holiday weekend and start to share some of the books I’m reading during the Summer months. If you’ve been reading this space for a while, you’ll know that one of my favorite times for catching up with books I’ve been meaning to read, or trying out new authors blind.

This is a first for me—sitting down and writing a review of a book that I’ve read BECAUSE of Zaptown-a book that’s been sent to me specifically to get my thoughts on it in writing. The book in question is called ‘Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes’ and it’s part of Prager’s ‘Modern Filmmakers’ series. The author is Aaron Barlow. (Also, this review contains spoilers for ‘Inglourious Basterds’. You have been warned.)

One of my particularly favorite fantasy novels, as a younger person, was Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, the tale of an enchanted wood (or was it? In the Arthur C. Clarke sense, this could actually be a Science Fiction novel) and the effect it has on a dysfunctional family, on a pair of brothers and their estranged father, and the ghost of a woman they’re all chasing. It was a terrific book, and it spawned several indirect-sequels also dealing with the wood, the mythagos in it, and the stories of various people drawn into the wood.