A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

The Child had been here. It was here no longer. The man Jack followed his nose down the stairs through the middle of the tall, thin house ... The man Jack sniffed the air. Then, without hurrying he began to walk up the hill." from page 10 This Newbery Medal winning book by Neil Gaiman is a fantasy-supernatural-mystery-coming-of-age story told in long, vignette-style chapters interspersed with black ink illustrations. When Nobody 'Bod' Owens is just a babe his family is killed by a Man, and Bod barely escapes with his life. Serendipity finds the toddler Bod wandering out of his home while the Man is killing his parents and his sister. Bod wanders up the hill and into the graveyard near his home where the graveyard folk take him in, give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, and teach him the ways of the dead. Since Bod is too young when his parents are killed to remember his own name, his adoptive parents, the Owens, give him a new one and their last name. Each chapter s...

House of Wax is a horror movie. It stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Jared Padalecki, and the (in)famous Paris Hilton. I must admit that I did not expect much from the movie. Truth be told, I expected this movie to be a cheesy horror film because Paris Hilton was in it. The only reason I decided to suck it up and suffer through it was because my dear Winchester brother, Jared Padalecki of Supernatural (CW15, Thursdays at 9 p.m.--it's an awesome show!) fame, was in it and he's not been in much besides Supernatural . Alas, I was pleasantly surprised by this little movie. It follows a group of six college age friends on a road trip and, of course, they run into car trouble. They are forced to seek help in the small town of Ambrose where appearances can be deceiving and things are not what they seem. The small group of friends has no idea what horrors await them when a serial killer who keeps unique souvenirs from his kills decides they'll mak...

It's the number sequence that's clued me in: 3-4-5, the simplest representation of the Pythagorean theorem. Ely was obsessed with it. He heard it in the cawing of the grackles outside our Hyde Park bungalow and claimed the traffic lights on Guadalupe were timed to it. from page 12, The Night Villa The Night Villa is Carol Goodman's latest novel. This one, like its predecessor, The Sonnet Lover , begins in the U.S. before moving the action to Italy. Dr. Sophie Chase, a classics professor at the University of Texas, is working on a book about a first century Roman slave woman named Iusta who essentially took her masters to court to sue for her freedom. Iusta's fate--both the outcome of her court case and her life--is vague as she disappears from the historical record when her village, Herculaneum, is buried by fallout from the eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The eruption buried the entire town and many of its inhabitants, preserving them in volcanic ash ...

30 Days of Night is a graphic novel; it is the first in a series of graphic novels of the same name. It is also the graphic novel upon which the movie of the same title is based; the movie version stars Josh Hartnett and Melissa George. 30 Days of Night is so titled because for 30 days from mid-November to mid-December Barrow, Alaska is shrouded in night. More specifically the 30 days in the title refers to the period in 2001 during which this phenomenon endangers the entire town when a murderous band of vampires descend upon it to cut off all communications and escape routes in order to massacre all the citizens in the town. Essentially the vampires wish to make the town their own private playground. The husband and wife team that sheriffs the town leads a small band of citizens that hides out in the basement of one of the buildings in town; they hope to wait out the month of night when hopefully the vampires will be forced to abandon the town when the sun rises again. Unfortunately...

The Matthews Public Library is proud to present its own adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear. Prepare to be amazed by this special presentation of the play as you've never seen it before! You can click here to view the video on our YouTube channel or you can click on the video below to view it here. Fix a bowl of popcorn, sit back and enjoy the wonders of Shakespeare!