Arts & Culture

A New Genre for 2024: Trying Out Thrillers

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So far in 2024, I have been pushing myself outside of my reading comfort zone. This meant exploring new genres and reading books I might not normally pick up. In the past month, I was really into thriller and mystery books. Although not all of them were winners, I found a few new favorites. 

I started with The Housemaid and The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden. The Housemaid is rated 4.34 on Goodreads and a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Award for 2022 Best Mystery and Thriller.

action movie

Jack Reacher: A Relatable Hero Marred by Poor Screenwriting

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Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is exactly what I expected it to be. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but watching this movie with the wrong expectations could be rough. I’d place this in the realm of the first three Transformers movies (Age of Extinction was just garbage) — not strictly good films, but fun if you’re willing to turn off your brain a little. The Jack Reacher films are based on Lee Child’s popular long-running novel series of the same name. Never Go Back is largely based on the plot of the eighteenth novel in the series, with which it shares its title.

Arts & Culture

Experimenter Analyzes Human Morality

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I like to think that I am a good person. But when I honestly think about it, there is no reason for me to believe that this is due to anything but sheer luck. I have lived a privileged life, and I have no idea what I would be capable of if circumstances ever pushed me to the edge. It is easy to assume that the horrors of this world are the handiwork of deranged, unstable people, but the evidence of history, full of genocide, mass murder and ethnic cleansing shows this to be a dangerous misconception. How is this possible?

Arts & Culture

You Better Make Room for This Film

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I went into Room knowing nothing other than that a mother and son are stuck in a room. For some reason, I was under the incorrect impression that this was a sci-fi plot, derivative of a Twilight Zone episode I had seen years ago. I don’t think this counts as a spoiler, but Room is very much grounded in a terrifying reality. Told from the five-year-old Jack’s (Jacob Tremblay) perspective, Room tells the story of Jack and his mother, ‘Ma,’ aka Joy (Brie Larson), who are prisoners in a tiny tool shed. Joy had been kidnapped seven years earlier, at the age of seventeen.