Cosmo Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis
Robert Beaken and Rowan Williams
Book
The period 1928-1942 saw some of the greatest political and social upheavals in modern British...
Venice: Faber Modern Classics
Book
Often hailed as one of the best travel books ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history...
St Paul's Cathedral: Archaeology and History
Book
This is the first volume concerned solely with the archaeology of a major late 17th century building...
Complete Stories: Kurt Vonnegut
Book
Here for the first time is the complete short fiction of one of the twentieth century's foremost...
Fiction anthology
Manhattan Transfer
Book
A modernist masterwork that has more in common with films than traditional novels, John Dos Passos'...
Forge of Darkness
Book
Now is the time to tell the story of an ancient realm, a tragic tale that sets the stage for all the...
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Books
Oct 10, 2017 (Updated Oct 11, 2017)
First published in 1950, this is one of the most classic portal fantasies ever written. Four children are sent from London to an old house in the country during the evacuations of World War II. Through a magic wardrobe, they enter the fantasy land of Narnia, which is a jumbled mixture of Greek mythology, Bible stories, and Arthurian romances, with a bit of Medieval Bestiaries thrown in.
The White Witch has made herself Queen of Narnia, and put it under the spell of an ever-constant winter. With the arrival of the children and the lion Aslan, an old prophecy is met, spring comes to Narnia, and there is a major clash between the good and evil Narnians on who gets to dominate Narnia.
I like the book better than the film just because of the amount of detail used by the master of fantasy C. S. Lewis.
Billie Wichkan (118 KP) rated The Die of Death (The Great Devil War #2) in Books
May 22, 2019
The Die of Death is volume 2 in The Great Devil War-series.
Picking up a few months after the conclusion of the first book, Philip has never done better in his life!
I really liked how the world in the story is expanded.
A fantastic and unpredictable book where anything can happen. We meet all the beloved characters again
Surprising ending that leaves one speculating what will happen next.
Really great book and I can't wait to read the next one.
I received a free copy via the author and this is my own voluntary honest review.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Biggles (1986) in Movies
Mar 28, 2018 (Updated Mar 28, 2018)
Potentially charming adventure movie is utterly torpedoed by fatal uncertainty of tone; what started off as a 'straight' period movie is reduced to gibberish by the addition of witless time-travel plotline, which drags crass 80s 'comedy' bits in with it. The fact it largely seems to be the work of people who've never actually seen a film before, let alone worked on one, is the just the coup de grace. Even Peter Cushing's usual near-supernatural ability to lift a dubious script mostly fails him; no wonder this was his final (non-CGI) big-screen appearance. Soundtrack contains Queen bassist John Deacon's only recordings away from the band; this is almost certainly not a good enough reason to watch the damn thing.
BobbiesDustyPages (1259 KP) rated The Pianist (2002) in Movies
Feb 21, 2018 (Updated Feb 21, 2018)
The movie follows a Polish Jewish man's Journey through Warsaw during World War II and all the horrors he not only witnessed but survived. The whole movie is just so raw and Adrian Brody' s performance is just so heart-wrenchingly beautiful that I felt like I've been through everything he's been through and by the end I found myself so shaken I had to take a few minutes just to calm myself down.