I’m sure you’ve seen the movie. A mouse of a boy runs down an indifferent city street, three larger boys in pursuit. Having recently tossed him into a dumpster because he had no lunch money to be extorted, they are trying to catch him to toss him back in after […]
There’s nothing quite like a great character. These are the fictional folks who leave indelible impressions on readers. They are the folks we root for. And, many times, they aren’t always the hero. In many respects, great secondary characters are more beloved than the main character. After all, what would […]
Spoilers ahead: Sirius Black was not, in fact, hellbent on killing Harry Potter in Prisoner of Azkaban. Oh and Aaron Stampler in Primal Fear? Well, let’s just say that there was far more behind his quiet stammer and poor-little-country-boy persona than he led us all to believe. Some plot twists […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.