Class, Control, and Calculated Cruelty in “The Housemaid”
A review of The Housemaid, by Freida McFadden. Hachette Book Group, 2022. The Housemaid came to my attention after the movie adaptation released in theaters in December of 2025. I got my hands on Freida McFadden’s most popular book and went in with very little information; I didn’t watch any movie promos or scenes, as…
Learning with Literature, Electric and Educated: A review of “The Flamethrowers”
A review of The Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner. Scribner, 2013. Some individuals may leave Rachel Kushner’s 2014 novel asking, ‘what was the point?’ What was the point in reading a book without a real plot? I think that Kushner answers this question in a very meta way near the end of her novel; I won’t…
We must also be The Cure: A review of “Everything is Tuberculosis”
A review of Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Penguin Random House, 2025. 184 pages Everyone is familiar with John Green; he is most well-known for writing The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns. Green and his brother, Hank, co-created the educational YouTube channel Crash Course. These previous works paved the…
LGBT Representation in “Red, White & Royal Blue”
A review of Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston. St Martin’s Griffin, 2019. When I picked up Red, White & Royal Blue, I braced myself for a book riddled with the tired clichés that often come when dealing with LGBT representation in storytelling (especially the stereotypes that are typically seen in writing about…
“The Mirror & the Lamp” reviews “AURORA: What Happened to the Earth? Live From Mexico City”
On Saturday, March 7th, at 3:45 p.m. McKenna Schillinger, Taylor Whitmore, Carter L. Myers, Cecilia Garcia Luengas, and Karissa L. Geisinger attended a showing of AURORA: What Happened To The Earth? Live From Mexico City at the Davenport Cinemark. This cooperative viewing came after this group of individuals had been studying AURORA to compose a…
A Warrior for Earth: A review of “What Happened to the Heart?”
A review essay of What Happened to the Heart? by AURORA. Decca, Glassnote and Petroleum Records, 2024. You can give up on meNever give up on love [The Earth](Do You Feel? 0:07) We can ignore what AURORA is saying, but we can never give up on The Earth. One-and-a-half years distant from publication, What Happened…
A Stew of Sounds: A review of “The Gods We Can Touch”
A review essay of The Gods We Can Touch by AURORA. Decca and Glassnote Records, 2022. “[a] long time ago we seemed to feel like God was around us—in the ground, in the trees, in the water we drank—and therefore also in us”-AURORA The palpable, flawed, and human characteristics of gods is the premise the…
A Lesson on Balance: A review of “Infections of a Different Kind of Human”
A review essay of Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1) and A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) by AURORA. Decca and Glassnote Records, 2018-2019. Following the release of her successful debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, in 2016, AURORA had more to discover and even more to say. After…
A Warrior of Love: A review of “All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend (Deluxe)”
A review essay of All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend (Deluxe) by AURORA. Decca and Glassnote Records, 2016. AURORA’s debut album is a hauntingly beautiful look at nature, humanity, finding one’s place in the world, and what it means to be alive. AURORA’s high, pure vocals and uniquely breathtaking production give the music…
Maybe Earth Isn’t So Bad?
A review of The Martian, by Andy Weir. Random House, 2011. 369 pages Right now, I can confidently say that no has been to Mars, however, it is a different reality in Andy Weir’s The Martian. Mark Watney is the botanist and engineer for NASA’s Ares Three mission; he is the protagonist of Wier’s novel…
Becoming the Predator: Rite and Restraint in Badlands
A review of Predator: Badlands, directed by Dan Trachtenberg. 20th Century Studios, 2025. In early January, I found myself counting down the hours before I would be able to watch the latest entry in the Predator franchise, Predator: Badlands. From the moment the first trailer appeared months earlier, I carried a quiet anticipation, measuring time…
Not a Rollercoaster Ride
A review of Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Vintage Contemporaries, 1985. In Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, Less than Zero, set in the 1980s, Clay is an eighteen-year-old trying to navigate ‘being home’ from college for Christmas break. He needs to reconnect with his friends, and he needs to figure out if he still…
When Passion turns Obsessive
A review of The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel. Random House, 2023. Michael Finkel’s latest non-fiction book, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession (2023), takes us through the adventures of Stéphane Breitwieser, an old museum security guard, and his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, as they steal over two hundred…
Sunglasses, Psychedelics, and The Morality Test
A review of Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Vintage Contemporaries, 1985. “All it comes down to is that I’m a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven’t seen for four months and people are afraid to merge” (Ellis 9-10). Launching into Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis forces…
Critically Acclaimed Fanfiction: Guillermo del Toro’s Autobiography Through Frankenstein
Art of any kind has a greater impact when it feels personal. If a movie, poem, melody, or novel captures a moment or feeling that echoes through one’s memory and mirrors any aspect of a specific recollection–if even only slightly–is bound to stay with us. Or at least this is what I can say about…
The Muppets: Get Back… Again
A review of The Muppet Show (2026), directed by Alex Timbers. ABC and Disney+, 2026. “We’re doing the show again, frog!” -Rowlf, The Muppet Show (2026) At some point in every cinophile’s life, one encounters The Muppets. Whether one’s first experience with Jim Henson’s marrionette/puppets was The Muppet Show (originally premiering in 1976, fifty years…
A Marriage Behind Bars
A review of An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2018. Life is hard. No one can deny that kernel of truth. It can be heartbreaking — soul-crushing — yet beautiful. Tayari Jones presents a gut-wrenching tale of a young black couple in this book. One of the main characters, named…
The Web-Swinging, Web-Crawling World of The Amazing Spider-Man Exhibition
On November 25, 2025, my sister, my friend, and I drove about an hour to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry to visit “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing – The Exhibition,” which explores the history of Spider-Man, how he came to be, and how he continues to be a cultural figure that unites us. The…
Mark Twain’s Boyhood Home & Museum: A Remembrance of his Legacy
May 15, 1912, marks the date of Mark Twain’s boyhood home being donated to the city of Hannibal, Missouri. Since then, it– among the other neighboring buildings– have been a museum to everyone. On a quiet Thursday morning in October of 2025, I spent the day with my mom. My experience started out in a…
The Power of Community (and pie)
On November, 16th, 2025, Beth M. Howard, author, former resident of the American Gothic house, and baker, presented her film, PIEOWA: A PIECE OF AMERICA, at the Western Illinois Museum (WI Museum). Howard has been on a film and book tour, showing PIEOWA and selling books at various events across the Midwest and larger United…
Grief, Memory, and The Passage of Time – Humanity in “A Visit from the Goon Squad”
A review of A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. Vintage Books, 2010. Jennifer Egan’s 2010 novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, is one of the most authentic books I’ve read this year. This book is alive and intense; Egan’s novel is, at every turn, full of profoundly real characters in absurd…
When Dreams Outshine Love
A review of La La Land, directed by Damien Chazelle. Lionsgate, 2016. In Damien Chazelle’s 2016 musical-drama La La Land, two artists, Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), are trying to find their place in their chosen crafts. We watch their banter-filled relationship turn into a romantic relationship as they both strive to chase…
The Modern Relevance of Jo Angouri’s Culture, Discourse, and the Workplace
A review of Culture, Discourse, and The Workplace by Jo Angouri, published by Routledge, 2018 “As companies move from a top-down to a horizontal structure, where the emphasis is on the performance of the team, new communication contexts and needs emerge” (Angouri 51). Jo Angouri’s 2018 Culture, Discourse, and the Workplace works to integrate its…
The Spoon that Fed in Frankenstein (2025)
A review of Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro. Netflix, 2025. Frankenstein (2025) – directed by Guillermo del Toro – is what I would call a $120 million dollar disappointment. The film Frankenstein is based on the 1818 novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley. But I am not reviewing this film as an adaptation, as…
i will never have enough time to talk about Florence + The Machine
A review of Everybody Scream, by Florence + The Machine. Polydor and Republic Records, 2025. Seventeen years distant from Lungs and “Dog Days Are Over,” British popstar Florence + The Machine breathes in and out . . . in and out . . . looking back at her discography—a history—in and of itself, and screams: …
Life, Eternity, or Anything Else Beyond or Between
A review of Eternity, directed by David Freyne. A24, 2025. Of all the versions of an afterlife that have been presented to film audiences, Eternity’s is one of the most simple and, yet, most procedural. In David Freyne’s newly released film, every (dead) person’s first glimpse of the afterlife comes in the form of an…
M.L. Rio and the Imitation of Art
If We Were Villains By M.L. Rio. Published by Flatiron Books, 2017. In her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M.L. Rio writes, “Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”(8-9). In a novel about a group of college students who perform…
Ravenous and Unrelatable
What Hunger By Catherine Dang. Published by Simon & Schuster, 2025. Catherine Dang’s What Hunger is a first-person thriller that hinges on the relatability of its protagonist, fourteen-year-old, Vietnamese-American Ronny Nguyen. As What Hunger begins, Ronny is on the precipice of entering high school, but her life is turned upside down when her brother is…
Carrying the Fire
A review of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Random House, 2006. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic world in The Road is void of color. In this brilliant novel, he shows that there is a beacon of hope when all seems lost, that we have to carry the fire. Everyone needs to get their hands on this novel…
My Best Friend’s Exorcism: A New Literary Experience
This past week, I read Grady Hendrix’s 2016 blockbuster novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism. It is described as “The Exorcist [if it] had been authored by Tina Fey instead of William Peter Blatty,” is accoladed with a review claiming, “This book packs all the magic of a summer horror flick,” and possesses a newly revised…
