A fine app version of the play, though one best suited for serious students and performers. (Requires iPad 2 and above.)
A deluxe scholarly treatment of the Scottish play that isn’t always intuitive but is filled with riches.
Folger Shakespeare Library editions of the Bard of Avon’s plays are the gold standard in high schools and colleges, demystifying Elizabethan language and delivering clear scholarly commentary. This version of Macbeth is no different, with plenty of opportunities for deep dives into the text. Consider Lady Macbeth’s Act I monologue, in which she pleads that “spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here”: Readers can jump to a dramatic reading of the lines, call up a glossary and access three brief commentaries on what’s going on in the scene. Users can also bookmark passages, make notes (either within the app or in a Facebook discussion group) and select cue lines for individual characters for performance rehearsals. Grasping all this demands that readers become familiar with about a half-dozen icons; for somebody just looking to surf through the play, the app’s bells and whistles may be distracting if not intimidating. But the in-text commentaries, presented by nearly two dozen Shakespeare scholars and actors, are consistently entertaining, accessible and enlightening, and a set of colorful introductory essays enlivens details about Shakespeare’s life and plays with a host of illustrations. The care and focus of those pieces make the more arbitrary inclusions seem all the more strange: There’s a stray pair of alternate readings of two scenes, and a brief video demonstrating printing in Shakespeare’s day cries out for fuller treatment. The play itself is, of course, immortal, a study of ambition, masculinity and greed that remains unmatched four centuries after it was first performed. That justifies the rich treatment this app offers, though it may feel a bit too kitchen-sink for the more casual readers.
A fine app version of the play, though one best suited for serious students and performers. (Requires iPad 2 and above.)Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Luminary Digital Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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